


The Stars Are Falling

by PyrrhaIphis



Series: Catching up to the present [1]
Category: Velvet Goldmine
Genre: Getting Together, Homophobic Language, Long, M/M, The infamous foul mouth of Curt Wild, some discussion of homophobia and racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 20:32:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 66,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9342248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyrrhaIphis/pseuds/PyrrhaIphis
Summary: Arthur Stuart attends the taping of a late night talk show on which Curt Wild is scheduled to appear.  After the show, Arthur goes to see Curt in his dressing room, and things go very well for both of them.  But their burgeoning relationship will be tested when rumors begin to spread about Curt becoming seriously involved with a popular female singer...





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let me know if any inappropriate Americanisms pop up in Arthur's POV or dialog so I can fix them!

            Early Thursday morning, while Arthur was still finishing his first cup of coffee and just barely beginning to plan out the research he would have to do for his next assignment, he got a phone call.  It was quite rare for him to get a phone call at the office; in fact, he didn’t even have a phone at his desk, and had to be called into the staff lounge to take the call.

            “You know, you made a huge mistake in this morning’s paper,” the man on the other end of the line said as soon as he answered.

            Arthur sighed.  He knew that voice.  “In what way, Brad?”

            “You accidentally ran a story from last year, instead of covering the president’s visit yesterday!”

            “It was a new piece, Brad.”

            Brad just laughed at him.  Like usual.

            Arthur had decided, on moving to New York, that he was going to give up on dating men and stick to women.  Not because he had suddenly decided he was no longer bisexual, but because it seemed too risky to date men in a country that had so much homophobic sentiment, and so many firearms.  But then Brad came along with his slick guitar …

            Even so, he had quickly realized that New York in 1980 was nothing like London in the 1970s.  He hadn’t had the courage to keep the relationship going long.  Besides, Brad seemed to find him more amusing than arousing, and that had quickly become grating.  Still, it had managed to be a relatively amicable break-up, which meant Brad periodically called him for no apparent reason other than to be annoying.

            “I have work to do,” Arthur said, to give a little warning before hanging up the phone.

            “Hey, no, wait, I’ve got a real reason to call!” Brad insisted.

            “I should hope so.”  Brad calling up just to prove he was still an arse was one thing when Arthur was at home, but when he was at work…  “So what is it?”

            “I thought you might want to come to watch the taping tonight,” Brad said.

            “Those late night talk shows really don’t do much for me,” Arthur told him.  “I don’t get the American sense of humour.”  As Brad constantly proved.

            “You’re only saying that because you don’t know who Harry’s guests are,” Brad insisted.  “You’ll never guess who it is.”

            “I’m sure not,” Arthur agreed.

            “I’ll give you a hint:  they’re singers.”

            “Brad, I hate these bloody guessin’ games of yours.  Just tell me who it is.”

            “Not if you’re not even gonna guess!”

            Arthur sighed.  “The Rolling Stones.”

            “Yeah, I wish,” Brad sighed.  “Guess again.”

            “Brad, there are a lot of singers in the world.  And I’m supposed to be _workin’_ right now,” Arthur pointed out, trying not to lose his temper.  Brad meant well…maybe.  And he didn’t have much to do in the mornings, since his show didn’t film until a few hours before it was broadcast.  In fact, considering he was only part of the band that played the host on and off the stage, it was surprising that he even had to show up to the studio before noon at all.

            “Okay, another hint, then.  You know one of them.  Like, in the Biblical sense.”

            “Curt Wild is goin’ to be on Harry Spooner’s chat show…?”  How was that possible?  Curt hadn’t put out an album in years…

            Brad laughed.  “See?  Now you want a seat at the taping, right?”

            “Y-yeah…”  Arthur shook his head, trying to focus his thoughts.  “But why is Curt…wait, you said there are other guests?”

            “Yeah.  I guess I owe you five bucks,” Brad said, with a deep sigh.  “Sounds like you were right about those guitar riffs in Tee’s songs.”

            Arthur fought not to grimace.  He had recognised Curt’s guitar right away the first time he heard one of Teresa Garcia’s generic pop songs on the radio, but it pained him to think of his idol being reduced to a back-up player.  “Why is he comin’ on the show with her?” he asked.  “If he’s only been backin’ her up…”

            “I don’t know,” Brad admitted.  “Tee’s coming on about her new movie.  Maybe your dreamboat’s got a part in it or something.”

            “I didn’t know she was even makin’ a movie.”  Not that he _cared_ she was making a movie, either.  Like many of the other pop singers she was so interchangeable with, Teresa Garcia was a decent singer, but the only thing that made her substantially different from her colleagues was her Mexican ancestry; her songs were so similar to the others’ that they were probably written by the same person.

            “You really need to start paying attention to the present, not just the past,” Brad said with a cruel chuckle.

            “Brad, I’m a journalist.  Payin’ attention to the present is my job.  But I’m usually dealin’ with politics, not pop music.”

            “Enh, you’re probably not going to like Harry’s monologue,” Brad told him.

            “I never do.”

            “But I’ve got to spend all day learning the background music for a song that’s going to be performed tonight, so…I think you’ll want to be here for _that_.”

            “That depends on whose song it is.”  Not that he had any intention of passing up the chance to be in the same room as Curt, regardless of whose song it was!

            “Well, there’s no lyrics, so I don’t know who’ll be singing it, but he wrote it.”

            “Can you get me in the front row?”

            Brad laughed.  “Fucking hell, Arthur, what kind of pull do you think I _have_?  I couldn’t get my own _mother_ a seat in the front row!  You’ll have to make do with the cheap seats in the back.  But if you’re _really_ nice to me, I might be able to get you into his dressing room after the show.”

            “I…”  Arthur had to bite his tongue to keep himself from offering his own soul for that chance.  “You know I’m nice,” he finally said, once he got himself under a little control.

            “I was hoping you’d offer to give me a blowjob,” Brad sighed, “but I guess that was silly of me.”

            “Next time there’s a baseball game, I’ll get our correspondent to take you into the locker room,” Arthur offered.  “How’s that for nice?”

            “Fuck, yeah!  See, that’s what I’m talking about!”  Brad laughed.  “Okay, the taping starts at nine o’clock, so come to the stage door by eight.  After that, I’ll have to be ready to take my position in case there’s going to be any run-throughs of the song before we go on.”

            “I’ll be there,” Arthur assured him.  “By the by, what song is it?”

            “I think it’s a new one.  It’s called ‘Chicken Little.’”

            “That’s new all right,” Arthur agreed.

            He spent the rest of the day eagerly awaiting eight o’clock.  A brand new Curt Wild song!  And, far more important, the chance to see Curt again!


	2. Chapter 2

            Before heading to the television studio, Arthur went back to his flat briefly to get himself ready.  He no longer had the kind of clothes he’d have worn to dress up back in the heady days of glam rock, but he did at least have a few clothes that were a bit less ugly than what he usually wore.  These days, he dressed to be unobtrusive—a good journalist witnessed events, without anyone paying him any mind—and plain clothes helped to make him fade into the background.  But he still had a few less plain articles of clothing.  A sharp button-down shirt in a pale blue, and a pair of black jeans were an improvement over the knit shirts and khakis he normally wore to work, even if they still weren’t terribly outlandish.  Arthur carefully attached that green pin Curt had slipped into his beer in the place of one of the top buttons on his shirt, where most people would hopefully mistake it for another button.  He also tried to fix up his hair a little, but it still looked rather awful.

            The overall effect was apparently a good one:  he felt like people were looking at him in the subway on the way to the studio, and Brad let out a low whistle on seeing him at the stage door.  “Shit, you’re really hoping to score, aren’t you?” he laughed.

            “Don’t be like that,” Arthur said.  “What if someone heard you?”

            “I didn’t say who with,” Brad pointed out.  “But I hope you’re planning on using protection.  God only knows what you’ll catch if you don’t.”

            “Nothing’s goin’ to happen anyway,” Arthur insisted.

            “Yeah, and that’s why you’re dressed to the nines.  ‘Cause you think nothing’s gonna happen.”  Brad continued to make fun of him the whole time he was leading Arthur to the set where _Talk to Harry_ was taped every weeknight.  The seating area was about half filled already, though there was an area at the front cordoned off as being VIP seating.  “Okay, you can sit in the back row here,” Brad told him.

            “Why the back row?  There’s lots of seats further up.”

            “Look, we’re only allowed personal guests in the back row,” Brad said, scowling at him.  “Those are the rules.  You never complained before.”

            “That’s when I was only comin’ to see _you_ ,” Arthur reminded him.

            “You think Curt Wild is better looking than I am?!” Brad demanded, sounding hurt.

            Arthur wasn’t the only one who laughed.  Everyone in earshot did, sending Brad into an embarrassed snit.  It was good to know that the rest of the audience remembered Curt.  In fact, Arthur spent most of the intervening hour talking with a few of the women sitting in front of him, who had also been Curt’s fans back in the early ‘70s.  Hearing their perspective on Brian’s ‘death’ was enlightening:  in the time they thought he really was dead, they had actually felt he had gotten a well-deserved punishment for having broken Curt’s heart, and when they found out he had faked it, they were enraged with him for having caused Curt even more pain, rather than for what he had done to all his innocent fans.

            _Talk to Harry_ only took up a half hour block on the television schedule, but in filming it could go for more than two hours, depending on how many times Harry Spooner fumbled his monologue, or how many times his guests said things they weren’t supposed to and forced a re-shoot.  One of the earlier tapings Arthur had witnessed had run so long that they nearly had to delay the broadcast, because the guest had such a foul mouth.

            So he was expecting this to be a very long experience.

            At least Harry didn’t fumble his monologue tonight.  Perhaps he was out of money to buy more cocaine, or he had gone on the wagon.  Arthur would have preferred it if he’d skipped the monologue entirely:  it was focused on the election, with a slight jab at the Winter Olympics.  Harry Spooner—like most of the country—seemed to find it amusing that anyone was even bothering to challenge President Reynolds at all, and he spent most of his monologue making light of the other candidates, particularly focusing on “the actor and the astronaut.”

            Once he was finally through with his monologue, the band did a big lead-in as Teresa Garcia came onto the stage.  Alone.  If Brad was just messing with him and Curt wasn’t even here…!

            After Harry welcomed Teresa to the show, they made pointless small talk for a minute or two, and then the trailer for Teresa’s movie, _He Done Her Wrong_ , was run on the movie screen that normally projected a view of the New York skyline.  Most of the trailer seemed to imply that the point of the picture was just following a girl from the slums of Los Angeles as she clawed her way to success as a pop singer:  a cheerful, upbeat kind of picture, the type that already existed in droves in one way or another.  But at the very end of the trailer were two scenes that obviously came from a different part of the picture.

            The first of those scenes was of Teresa crying and clenching her fist, exclaiming “I’ll prove you wrong!  I’ll become the biggest star ever, and then I’ll may you _pay_!”  Then it changed to show a shirtless man standing on stage at a rock concert, his back to the camera, as the audience in front of him exploded in wild applause.  His stance was unmistakable; Arthur knew those shoulder blades, and every slight curve of the muscles in that strong back; the dirty blond hair hanging down to the tops of his shoulders wasn’t even needed to identify him.

            If Curt was in the movie, then surely he really _was_ here tonight?

            After the trailer was over, Teresa and Harry chatted about the picture for a while.  About how Teresa had gotten involved in making a movie in the first place, and if there was any similarity between her own rise to stardom and her character’s.  That was an idea she absolutely rejected:  “Everyone in the movie tries to stop Meche from becoming a star, and that’s never been the case for me, not even a little bit,” Teresa told him, smiling warmly.  “I had warm, supportive friends on all sides, and my family was always there for me.  Most importantly, unlike Meche, the stars I met always helped me along the way.  I’d never have been able to succeed without them.”  From there, she seemed to want to move on to discussing the racism she had to face in her daily life before she became a star, but Harry quickly changed the subject back to the movie.

            “So tell me about your co-stars in the picture,” Harry asked.  “Anyone going to win an Oscar for their magnificent performance?”

            Teresa giggled.  “I doubt it.  This isn’t that kind of movie.  But I’m hoping one of my co-stars will win an Oscar for Best Song,” she added, with a sly glance off-stage.  “I’ve always loved his work, and I think it’s his best song yet.”

            “But he won’t win for his acting?”

            “Well, he’s sort of the antagonist…and I don’t think they have a Best Antagonist award,” Teresa said, with another giggle.  “Besides, he’s not really…very convincing as a bad guy…”

            From somewhere off-stage came a strangled objection.  Arthur covered his mouth to hold in the laughter.  That was definitely Curt’s voice.

            “I see,” Harry said, nodding.  “I’m glad to hear it.  There’s two kinds of people I don’t allow on my show:  bad actors and villains.  So that means we don’t need him to show up, and we’ve got more time to talk to _you_.”

            “Fuck you!” Curt’s voice screamed from off-stage, making the entire audience start laughing, though Teresa was laughing even harder than the audience.  Curt came storming onto the stage, flipping off Harry Spooner as he walked.  “You think I’m just gonna stand back there with my dick in my hand instead of coming out here and defending myself?!”

            Teresa was by this point laughing so hard that she actually fell out of her chair.  Harry Spooner on the other hand was massaging his temples.  “You were told, Mr. Wild, the rules about swearing and other obscene conduct,” he said in a tight voice that sounded rather like he was gritting his teeth together between every syllable.

            “Fuck that horseshit!  You don’t get to tell me what I can and can’t do, motherfucker!  You’re nothing but a failed comedian who can’t get a real job!  People watch your lame-ass show to see the guests, not to see you!  So you can shut your fucking hole and let me do what I came here to do, or you’re gonna wish you were never born!”

            Teresa got to her feet and walked over to put a hand on Curt’s shoulder.  “If you’d been half that terrifying in the movie, you’d have made a much better villain,” she told him.

            “Back off, Tee!  Don’t go defending this shithead!”

            Teresa crossed her arms and glared at Curt.  “Don’t make me call my brother,” she said sternly.

            “Yeah, like that’d worry me,” Curt snorted, without taking his eyes off of Harry.

            As Teresa continued trying to talk Curt down, Arthur found himself feeling a little concerned by their conversation.  They sounded a little too familiar to have only gotten to know each other on the set of a movie, particularly considering that Curt’s part was probably not a large one.

            Eventually, the situation was calmed down by the appearance of an unremarkable woman in her mid-thirties who stomped up to Curt and slapped him in the face, hard, then proceeded to lecture him as if she was his mother.  Strangely, Curt stood there in a sullen silence, rubbing his cheek and glowering, but didn’t argue with her.  Instead, he accepted her orders, and the show proceeded, with Curt and Teresa taking seats and the conversation beginning anew, as if nothing had happened.  Arthur wondered how in the world they were going to handle broadcasting all that, considering how many non-televisable words had escaped Curt’s lips in the intervening time.

            “So…what made you choose to go with a washed-up ex-star for your villain?” Harry asked, looking at Teresa.

            “Fu—” Curt started, but was elbowed by Teresa before he could finish the word.

            “Originally, Curt was just going to write the song for the antagonist to sing,” Teresa told him.  “He and my older brother used to be real tight.”

            “Yeah, I’ve known Tee since she was this big,” Curt added, holding up a hand about the height of his knee.  “She was pretty cute as a kid.  Dunno what happened since then,” he added, shaking his head sadly.  The audience laughed, but Arthur wasn’t sure it was a joke.  Teresa Garcia was definitely cute by the standard held by most men, but he didn’t think she would fit Curt’s definition of ‘cute.’  Curt shrugged once the audience quieted down a bit.  “I’ve been helping her out with her songs a bit since she went pro, ‘cause the guitarists she was getting saddled with all sucked.  So when she wanted a song for this movie, I didn’t mind providing one.  It’s actually one of the ones I’ve been preparing for my next album, but I had to re-work the lyrics a bit.”

            Arthur hoped that Harry would ask about that next album, but instead he asked “How did that turn into playing the part?”

            “Well, that was my fault,” Teresa admitted.  “See, they cast an actor in the role originally, and then he was just going to lip sync to Curt singing the song.  But, ah, there’s a…um…our characters…er…”

            “They fuck,” Curt said for her, making the audience laugh again.

            Harry smashed his fist into the top of his desk.  “You can’t use that kind of language on television!” he shouted.

            Curt sighed exaggeratedly.  “Fine.  They get it on,” he supplied.  “Is that better?”

            “Barely.”

            Teresa giggled again before continuing.  “I’m still new at this whole acting thing, and…well, I’m sure that if I keep at it, I might be comfortable enough with it someday, but…when it came time to film that scene with the actor, I just couldn’t do it.  I was too scared to let him anywhere near me, even though I wasn’t really naked or anything.  I mean, I had my panties on, but it was still just too scary to let him anywhere near me!  He was this big, burly stranger, you know?”  She shuddered as though she was a little child, making the men in the audience—other than Arthur—let out a collective sigh.  Her innocent vulnerability was something Teresa Garcia had that most other girl pop singers didn’t have, but it seemed so out of character with the lyrics of her songs that Arthur had always rather assumed it was an act.  He still was not, in fact, convinced that it wasn’t.  “Anyway, since I’ve known Curt most of my life, I was just barely able to film the scene with him, so he took over the role.  And then we had to write a new part for the actor, so he wouldn’t get fired just because I’m a terrible, unprofessional actress,” Teresa continued.

            “If the clips in the trailer are any indication, you’re as good an actress as you are a singer,” Harry assured her.

            “Yeah, but what if someone doesn’t think she’s a good singer?” Curt countered, with a laugh.  “Don’t say something so fucking ambiguous if you want it to be a compliment!”

            “Are you even _capable_ of saying two sentences without swearing?” Harry asked.

            “What would be the fucking fun in that?” Curt replied.  Arthur could see the mischief twinkling in his eyes.  He was enjoying winding Harry up.  Hard to blame him, really.

            Harry just stared at Curt, his lips pursed in vexation.  Then he let out a deep sigh.  “You know, I don’t think I care anymore.  Just play the fucking song already so I can go home and get drunk.”

            Curt was laughing triumphantly on his way over to the side of the stage where the band was getting ready to play.  Despite the blasé way he was talking about Curt earlier, Brad looked almost as excited as Arthur was.

            “Don’t forget to introduce the song!” Teresa chirped at him.

            “You do it!” Curt shouted back.

            Teresa giggled, then looked at the audience.  “With the new lyrics, it’s called ‘Chicken Little,’ but Curt’s original version is called ‘The Stars Are Falling.’  The verses are different, to fit the movie, but the chorus is the same, right?”

            Curt nodded, but didn’t otherwise answer her.  He was already getting into the groove of the music, preparing to perform.  The more the song meant to him, the more he entered a trance-like state before performing it.  Or so Arthur had gathered over years of hearing people gossip about what it was like to be backstage before Curt went on.

            From the first chord of the guitar, Arthur was mesmerised by the song.  Curt held the microphone and its stand together, singing into it sometimes soft and seductively, other times almost violently, and he frequently thrust forward with his hips as if he was trying to have sex with the microphone stand.  The verses didn’t do much for Arthur, but the refrain made Arthur’s breath grow short and fast, his heart pounding frantically:

> _The stars are falling:_
> 
> _Make a wish._
> 
> _The night is calling:_
> 
> _Make a wish, baby._
> 
> _Join up with my game,_
> 
> _You’ll never be the same._
> 
> _You wish for me,_
> 
> _And I’ll wish for you, baby._

            No matter how hard he tried, Arthur couldn’t interpret that refrain as being about anything but that night they had shared on the rooftop of that London club.  Every note of the guitar filled Arthur’s head with memories of Curt’s thumb caressing his lips.  Every word that Curt sang sent thrills through him like the feeling of Curt’s lips pressed against his own.  Every drum beat reminded him of the rhythm of Curt’s hips grinding up against him…

            When the song ended, Arthur once again felt the same pain he had when he had to watch Curt leaving him behind on that rooftop ten years ago.  Even though Curt had said “I want to see you again,” and had taken Arthur’s telephone number with him, some sad part of him had always known that it was a lie, and that Curt would never call.

            Last week, in that pub, Curt had said “see you around” as he was leaving, but Arthur had wondered if he meant it any more than he had ten years ago.  No matter how much he had dressed up for this opportunity, Arthur hadn’t really been sure he was going to go through with it and take advantage of Brad’s position to go to Curt’s dressing room after the show was over.

            But that was before he heard that song.  Before he’d been given such strong proof that Curt had never forgotten about him.  That maybe he looked back on that night almost as fondly as Arthur did.

            Now, there was nothing that was going to keep him from going to that dressing room.


	3. Chapter 3

            As soon as the show was over, Arthur made his way around to the place he and Brad had agreed upon, and soon Brad came to let him into the backstage area.  “I had _planned_ this whole big speech about how you shouldn’t get your hopes up and all, but _fuck_!”  Brad shook his head as he was leading Arthur through the narrow backstage hallways.  “You’re not holding out on me, right?”

            “What?”

            “I mean, you guys haven’t been secretly fucking all this time, right?”

            Arthur laughed.  “You think I’d be puttin’ up with this if we were already an item?”

            Brad sighed deeply.  “You didn’t make up that whole ‘make a wish’ thing, right?”

            “Considerin’ I don’t remember ever tellin’ you about that in the first place…”

            “You talk in your sleep,” Brad reminded him.

            “Yeah, so you claim.  No one else has ever complained.”  Not that there had been all that many in the right position to complain about that…a fact that Brad spent the rest of the walk pointing out in the most offensive language possible.

            When they reached the door to Curt’s dressing room, Brad knocked, then opened the door.  “Someone here to see you, Mr. Wild,” he shouted through the open door.

            “I’m in the shower!” Curt shouted back.  “Tell them to fuck off!”

            Brad laughed, and shook his head.  “Last chance to back out,” he whispered to Arthur.  “God knows what he’ll do to you if he doesn’t really want to see you.”

            “I’ll take the risk,” Arthur assured him, then went inside and shut the door behind him.

            It was a small dressing room, even smaller than Arthur's flat.  It had a small cot, a dressing table and chair, and a door—presently shut—beyond which Arthur could hear Curt’s shower running.  Curt’s clothes were draped across the chair at the dressing table, but there were no other signs of him in the room itself.  Arthur was still fighting the urge to go over and touch Curt’s clothes when he heard the shower shut off.

            A moment later, Curt came out, towelling his hair dry.  He stopped walking suddenly, letting out a low growl.  From the position of the towel in his hands, he could surely see Arthur’s feet, but not his face.

            “I thought I told you to fuck—” Curt started, but his voice died in his throat as he lowered the towel and saw Arthur’s face.  “Oh…it’s…I didn’t know…”  He stopped, biting his lip for a second, then an almost shy smile crept onto his face.  That was the last look he had given Arthur last week, before walking out of the pub.  Awkward—unnaturally so, considering who he was—but adorable.  “You were in the audience?”

            “Yeah.”  Arthur wanted to say more, but he wasn’t sure he could make his mouth work properly.

            “Do you…watch this kind of show a lot…?”

            Arthur shook his head.  “No, uh, the guitar player’s an, um, an old friend of mine.  He—he told me you’d be here…”

            Curt nodded with a small smile, and his eyes played down across Arthur’s body.  Then his smile widened into a grin, and he moved closer.  “So you came here to see me?”

            Arthur nodded, wanting to answer with words, but he couldn’t make his lips cooperate to produce anything other than a ridiculous, childish expression of glee.  He wanted to show that he was an adult now, but he was still acting like the same star-struck boy he was ten years ago…

            Having completely closed the distance between them, Curt reached one hand up to stroke Arthur’s face and lips, then moved the hand around to cradle the back of his head, pulling him down into a deep, passionate kiss.

            It was impossible to gauge how long they spent standing there kissing, their arms wrapping around each other, pulling their bodies closer and closer together.  By the time they both started trying to get Arthur’s clothes out of the way, the front of his shirt was soaked through with the water still clinging to Curt’s body.

            Their lovemaking had something frantic about it that it hadn’t had ten years ago, an urgency that had been utterly absent then—though perhaps part of the urgency had been caused by the awkward delay of looking for a condom and lubricant.  But no matter how frantic or urgent, it was still beautiful; the collision of their bodies so intense, as if Curt was trying to pass his whole soul into Arthur’s body, possessing it utterly.

            Once they were finished, they both collapsed onto the cot, panting to catch their breath.  As they sat there, their sides pressed up against each other, a thought struck Arthur, and he couldn’t help laughing.

            “What’s so funny?” Curt asked, in an almost lazy tone of voice, still staring straight ahead of him.

            “It just occurred to me,” Arthur commented, “that we’ve never properly introduced ourselves.”  Somehow, that had never come up ten years ago.  Even when he’d given Curt his number, he had only written down his first name.

            Curt laughed, too.  “No, I guess we haven’t, huh?”

            “I’m Arthur Stuart.”  He reached his hand over towards Curt as he spoke.

            Curt chuckled as he shook Arthur’s hand.  “Curt Wild.”

            “Yeah,” Arthur said, fighting laughter, “I know.”

            They both laughed, still holding hands across each other’s chests.

            Then Curt let go of Arthur’s hand, and turned his face towards his own, leaning in for a kiss.  “I want to see you again,” he said after the kiss.

            “I’ve heard that before,” Arthur said, a sour feeling seeping into his gut.

            “I mean it.”

            “Oh?”

            “I meant it, then, too,” Curt assured him.  “I just…”  He looked away with a sigh.  “It wasn’t up to me.  I’d have called if it had been.  Really.”  He looked back again.  “I’ll call this time.  I promise.”

            “I want to believe you,” Arthur admitted.  “But I…it really hurt that you never called.”  Despite that he had had the Flaming Creatures constantly reminding him that he didn’t need Curt because he had them.  “So I’ll only give you my number if you give me yours.”

            Curt laughed.  “Deal.”


	4. Chapter 4

            When he had gotten home, the first thing Arthur had done was to copy down Curt’s phone number in about a dozen places, to make sure nothing could happen to it.  If his wallet was stolen, he’d still have it in his satchel.  If that was stolen, too, he’d still have it in his main notebook.  And if anything happened to that, he’d have it on that slip of paper he slid into the cover of Curt’s latest album.  And if anything happened to _that_ …well, he had a lot of back-ups.  He had at least stopped short of writing on the wall of his flat.

            With that taken care of, he had been able to relax, sinking into the most satisfied sleep he had had since coming to this country.  He would have been happier if he’d been able to sleep by Curt’s side, but…it was still a deep, happy sleep.

            So deep, actually, that he was nearly late for work that morning, and had to skip breakfast.  Though at least there were a few stale bagels in the staff lounge, so he didn’t have to go completely hungry.

            At least he was well-rested.  Well-rested and suddenly hopeful that his life wouldn’t turn out to be a total disaster after all, maybe even that a fairy tale ‘happy ending’ might lurk somewhere in his future, if he was very lucky.  Lucky and worked hard for it.  And he planned to work at it just as hard as he could.  But since Curt wasn’t around at the moment, Arthur was having to settle for working hard at his job instead.

            Thus he was carefully reading through an important source when Mary came over to his desk.  “That guy called back,” she told him.

            “What guy?” Arthur asked, looking at her curiously.

            “The one who called you yesterday.”

            Arthur winced.  What could Brad want now?

            “Look, I want you to make him understand that I’m no one’s secretary,” Mary said, scowling at him.  “I answer that phone because my office is close to it, not because it’s part of my job.  I don’t want anyone to think I’m just some damn secretary!”

            “Yeah, I’ll make sure he understands,” Arthur assured her as he got to his feet.  “And that he doesn’t call back again unless it’s really bloody important.”

            “He doesn’t sound like someone who’d ever have a line on something important,” Mary chuckled.  “Sounds more like a stoner.”

            “He’s been known to smoke the odd joint,” Arthur agreed, “but he’s usually pretty sober.  Just irresponsible.  But he works at a television studio.  Something important might happen there.  In theory.”

            Mary laughed.  “Maybe their news crew will get held hostage,” she suggested.

            “We can only hope.”

            As soon as he picked up the phone, Arthur gave Brad quite the lecture about the inappropriateness of calling him at work, and about how much he was annoying Mary, whose office was so close to the lounge, and he probably would have gone off on a tangent about Brad’s annoying sense of humour if Brad hadn’t managed to interrupt him while he was taking a breath.

            “Shit, don’t tell me it _wasn’t_ you,” Brad exclaimed.

            “What wasn’t me?”

            “Well, the rumour mill’s been working overtime since the janitors discovered a used condom in Curt Wild’s dressing room,” Brad said, making Arthur’s face start heating up, “and I assumed that meant you got lucky, but you’re not talking like someone who just got laid last night.”

            “I-I—no, that—that was—it was—”  Arthur cleared his throat, trying to calm his thoughts.  “You weren’t wrong,” he finally managed to say, “but I hope you didn’t tell anyone that!”

            “Well, I told them they were definitely wrong when they suggested he’d used it on Tee, but no, I didn’t tell them I let my prettiest ex-boyfriend in there.”

            Arthur let out a sigh of relief.  “You’re not goin’ to tell anyone ever, right?”

            “What’s the big deal?  You’re not the only gay reporter in the world.  No one would even care.”

            “I’m not—”  Arthur glanced over his shoulder at the door back out of the lounge.  He could just see Mary in her office, and she was definitely listening to him.  “I’m not gay,” he whispered into the phone, “I’m bisexual, and you know that perfectly well.  You’re the one who’s gay.”

            “Tomato, tomahto,” Brad said, with a laugh.

            Arthur grimaced.  “It’d hurt Curt’s career, anyway.  People these days aren’t so acceptin’ as they were in the ‘70s.”

            “Yeah, tell me about it,” Brad sighed.  “I may have said something to the guys about how I was sure Curt had been with a man, not with Tee, but I didn’t let ‘em know I had inside information.”

            “All right.”  Brad’s co-workers all knew he was gay.  They had likely dismissed his opinion as biased, or a pathetic attempt to imply that _he_ had been the lucky recipient of Curt’s attention, so Curt’s reputation was probably safe.  Hopefully.  “Did you have anything important you wanted to say?”

            “I wanted to know if you’d really scored with Curt Wild.  Isn’t that important?”

            “Not important enough to call me at work about,” Arthur sighed.

            With a final admonition not to call him at work again without due reason, Arthur hung up the phone, and went back to his office, after again apologising to Mary for the inconvenience.  The whole experience left him a bit rattled, though.  If any tabloids got hold of the information, Curt’s reputation might suffer for it.  Unless that kind of sleeping around was what people _wanted_ from Curt.  It was, after all, something he used to be known for.

            Still, Arthur decided he had better talk to Curt about it when they next spoke.  And they _would_ speak again.  If Curt didn’t call, then Arthur was going to call him.  At least now he had an excuse…


	5. Chapter 5

            Arthur hadn’t been back at his flat for more than ten minutes before the telephone rang.  He had been sitting at his desk, trying to decide how long he had to wait before calling first, so the phone was in easy reach, and he answered it before the second ring.

            “Fucking hell,” Curt’s voice exclaimed through the receiver.  “Do you always answer the phone that fast?  Just about gave me a heart attack…”

            Arthur laughed uncomfortably.  “No, I just…I was sittin’ right by the phone, and…uh…well…”  He cleared his throat slightly.  “I’m glad you called.”

            “You mean you’re glad I called _this time_ ,” Curt sighed.

            “That too.”

            Curt was silent for a moment or two, then he let out a heavy breath.  “I couldn’t…I don’t think I could have said this with you sitting right there in front of me,” he said, “but I think I kinda owe you an explanation.  About why I never called.”

            “I’d appreciate one,” Arthur agreed.

            “Yeah…so, what happened was that…well, you know I’d just put out a record with Jack Fairy, right?”

            “Of course.”

            “Well, I thought—I thought we could bring you with us on tour,” Curt told him.  “Everyone would have had a fit if you were just accompanying us without working for the tour somehow.  So I asked Jack what kind of job we could say a teenage boy was holding.  But then he asked me why.”  Curt fell silent for so long that Arthur began to wonder if the story was over.

            “What did you tell him?” he prompted.

            “The truth.  I didn’t see any reason to lie about it.  I mean, I still don’t know if Jack’s into boys or girls or sex at all, but…everyone else in that scene was bisexual, so I didn’t see any reason he’d object.”

            “But he did?”

            “Yeah.”  Curt sighed.  “Actually, he slapped me.”

            “I can’t imagine that.”

            “I couldn’t have imagined it, either,” Curt laughed.  “Then he asked me if I ever thought about what I was doing, and demanded to know what I’d do after I got an innocent kid strung out on heroin, and…it got pretty ugly, actually.  I never knew he could be like that.”

            “And that’s why you never called?  Because…because Jack Fairy didn’t approve?”  That felt like a pretty hollow reason…

            “No, that’s not it at all,” Curt said, with a sad kind of laugh.  “He took your phone number away from me.  Said I could have it back when I got myself cleaned up and off drugs.  Or at least off the hard stuff.”  He cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “But by the time I managed it…”

            “By the time you managed it, I’d already been livin’ in America for a year,” Arthur told him.

            “You’ve been here that long and you never came looking for me?”  Curt sounded a bit hurt by that.

            “I went to a few of your concerts,” Arthur assured him.  “But, uh, I didn’t see what else—what else I could do.  I mean, um, I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me again.  Or even if you’d, well, remember me.”

            Curt didn’t say anything at first, but Arthur could hear him breathing on the other end of the line.  “Yeah,” he finally said, in a slow, deep tone.  “I guess I can see that.”

            In the silence that followed, Arthur thought about saying that one of the reasons he had taken the job as a reporter, at first, was because Curt had just been arrested with all those drugs, and Arthur had hoped that he might be one of the ones sent to cover the trial.  But then Curt had pled ‘guilty,’ and there hadn’t _been_ a trial to cover.  It didn’t really seem like the right thing to say, or the right time to say it, so he held his tongue until Curt spoke again.

            “Anyway, uh, I’ve been thinking about something you said last night,” Curt said, his voice sounding like he was trying to force himself to be light and cheerful.  “That guitar player who told you I’d be there…were you fucking him?”

            Arthur laughed.  “A long time ago, yeah.  But then I learned how annoyin’ he was, and we broke up.”

            “What were you dating someone so obnoxious for in the first place?”

            Arthur let out a soft chuckle.  “We met at a bit of a street festival.  He was tryin’ to chat me up, but I was ignorin’ him, ‘cause he didn’t seem like my type.  Then he borrowed a guitar from one of the performers, and started playin’ one of your songs…and I just couldn’t keep sayin’ ‘no’…”

            “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

            “I can’t help bein’ a fool for musicians.”

            “But that guy’s playing is shit!” Curt exclaimed.  “I can get it with the Flaming Creatures—they’re good—but _that guy_?  He sucks!  Did you hear how many notes he dropped last night?!”

            “I’d never heard that song before last night.  How would I know if he wasn’t playin’ it well?” Arthur pointed out.

            “Well, he was fucking it up really bad.”

            “I believe you.”  Arthur hesitated a moment, biting his lip and wondering if he had the courage to say what he wanted to.  “I’d like to hear _you_ play it sometime…” he finally said in a voice that struck him as unusually timid.

            “I’d be glad to,” Curt assured him, a rich sensuality in his voice that made something inside Arthur start quivering.  “Maybe after our date.”

            “Date?”

            “Oh, shit, I got distracted!” Curt shouted.  “I, uh, the whole reason I was calling was that I thought maybe we could go on a date tonight,” he admitted, a bit sheepishly.  “You know, dinner and a movie, and…maybe after that…”

            “That sounds great.”

            “Okay, where do you live?  I’ll come pick you up.”

            “C-can’t we just meet somewhere?”  The idea of Curt seeing the crummy building he lived in mortified Arthur.

            “What, you don’t trust me?”

            “That’s not what I meant…”

            “C’mon, it’s already almost seven.  If I drive, we can be at dinner before eight, but if we have to meet up at the restaurant, it’ll probably be nine before we get our food.  I’m used to eating a lot earlier than that,” Curt told him.

            “Nnnn…”  Arthur shut his eyes, trying desperately to think of any possible excuse to refuse to hand out his address.  Most of the excuses were so pathetic he couldn’t stand the idea of saying them out loud, especially not to Curt.  “You…you won’t judge me by where I live, will you?”

            “Huh?  What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “I’m completely sodding broke.  That’s why I don’t want you to see where I live.”

            “Oh.  Yeah, no worries.  C’mon, you have any idea where I grew up?” Curt asked, his voice laughing.

            “Well, that’s true,” Arthur chuckled.  A trailer park was certainly an even worse place to live than Arthur’s flat…though the flat was considerably smaller.

            Even so, it took some more prodding from Curt before Arthur could bring himself to admit where he lived.  Curt didn’t say anything judgemental, but there was something in his tone that told Arthur he was still judging him.  Of course he was.  Who wouldn’t?

            Being worried about just how much he had been reduced in Curt’s eyes by his place of residence tainted everything about Arthur’s preparations for their date.  What point was there in dressing up if Curt would never take him seriously again?


	6. Chapter 6

            As soon as he was ready to go, Arthur went out to wait in front of his building.  No risk of Curt coming inside to see the trash in the hallways, or the lift that was perpetually out of order, or learning that Arthur’s flat was down in the basement, where it felt and smelled like a cave all year long.  The exterior of the building wasn’t much better, of course, but…there wasn’t anything he could do about that.

            He hadn’t been waiting long before Curt’s car pulled up in front of the building.  Arthur recognized it from the television coverage of the arrest:  it was the same black 1971 GTO that had been found with more than a thousand dollars’ worth of heroin simply sitting out on the front passenger seat.  Whoever rebuilt the front end had done a very good job, though; it didn’t at all look like it had ever been wrapped around a telephone pole.

            “Do you drive very often?” Arthur asked, as he was getting in the car.

            “Not really,” Curt admitted.  “I get pulled over every time I pass a cop car, even if I’m obeying the speed limit.  But trying to get a cab on a Friday night is like Russian Roulette, you know?”  He sighed, shaking his head.

            “Not really; I can’t usually afford a taxi,” Arthur told him.

            Curt nodded, but didn’t say anything.  He was biting his lip, and looked a little nervous as he pulled back out into traffic.

            “Is something wrong?” Arthur asked.

            “No, it’s just…sorta weird,” Curt said, with a slightly forced laugh.  “This is a new experience for me.  Going on a first date with someone I’ve already fucked twice.”

            Arthur laughed.  “Yeah, me too,” he agreed.

            “But…”

            “What?”

            Curt sighed heavily.  “My manager read me the riot act this morning.  ‘Cause I didn’t dispose of that condom properly, and so she found out I got laid, and…”

            “And what?  She thought you’d given up men?”

            “I pretty much had, actually,” Curt sighed.  “Too dangerous.”

            “Yeah.”

            Curt shrugged.  “Anyway, uh…with the movie and all, people are gonna be recognising me again, so we can’t let anyone know this is a date.  They’ve gotta think we’re just two friends hanging out on a Friday night.”

            “The movie’s already open?”

            “Opened today.”

            Arthur smiled.  “Are we goin’ to see it?”

            “I’d like to increase its box office so I’d get a bigger residual, but no way are we seeing it,” Curt said, shaking his head.  “You wouldn’t want to.  I get killed at the end.”

            “Shite, don’t phrase it like that!”

            Curt laughed at Arthur’s reaction.  “Okay, okay, my _character_ gets killed at the end,” he amended, after he finished laughing.

            “Why?”

            “Well, because it’s a revenge picture.”

            “What did he _do_?” Arthur asked.

            “Nothing worth getting shot for,” Curt assured him.  “If everyone I ever had a one-night stand with decided to kill me…I’d have been dead long before I met you.”

            “Don’t even talk about something so horrible!”  A world without Curt Wild in it would not be a world worth living in.

            Curt took one hand off the steering wheel to stroke Arthur’s leg gently.  “Hey, don’t worry about it.  Real people don’t usually get that crazy.  I’m still here, aren’t I?”

            Arthur set his own hand on top of Curt’s.  “I want you to _stay_ here, too.”

            “I plan on it.”

            The conversation didn’t get any further than that before Curt’s earlier point was proven amply by the fact that they were, in fact, pulled over, despite that traffic was moving slowly enough that Curt couldn’t have been speeding even if he had wanted to.  One officer kept a close eye on Arthur while Curt was given a sobriety test, then both officers shined flashlights into the back seat.  Since there weren’t any drugs and Curt was entirely sober, they had to go away defeated, leaving Curt cursing under his breath the whole time they finished driving to the restaurant.

            “There must be laws against it,” Arthur mused, as they were waiting for their food.  “It’s persecution.”

            “Not much I can do about it,” Curt said.  “It’s actually pretty common to assume people are gonna break the same laws again after they get out.  Just usually they only pull _that_ kind of crap on people in the ghettos.”  He bit his lip.  “It’s gotten worse since…”

            “Is this my fault?” Arthur asked.  “Or, rather, my editor’s fault…?”

            “You weren’t the only one,” Curt told him.  “At least half a dozen tried finding him before the anniversary.  Even a heavy-hitter from _Rolling Stone_.”

            “And none of them figured it out?”

            Curt shrugged.  “No one printed anything.  I think most of the papers and magazines got bullied into dropping the story, so it didn’t matter if the reporter figured anything out.”

            Arthur sighed.  “Sounds bloody familiar.”  He looked at Curt curiously.  “Who was behind it?  They were makin’ you—”

            “I don’t know who they are.  But they own some cops.  And claimed to own some judges.”

            With a combination like that, they could have sent Curt back to jail for good.  “Probably a good idea not to talk about it, then, huh?” Arthur asked, trying to sound light and cheerful.

            “Yeah.”

            They fell into silence until their food arrived, and even then it remained uncomfortably quiet.  It wasn’t either of them who broke that silence, but a drunken young man who didn’t quite seem old enough to be drinking.  He walked over to their table, glaring death at Curt.

            “You got a problem with me?” Curt finally asked, as the fellow kept staring at him.

            “You deserved it!” he retorted, his breath reeking so badly of cheap beer that Arthur worried it was going to contaminate his dinner.  “You can’t get away with treating my little Tee that way!”

            Curt sighed deeply, and looked back at his dinner.  “It’s a movie, shithead.  It’s not real.”

            “Who the fuck you think you are, feeling up Tee’s breasts?!”

            “ _It.  Was.  A.  Movie_ ,” Curt repeated, sharply delineating each word.  “And lemme tell ya, her tits aren’t that great.”

            That only made the Teresa Garcia fan release a stream of inebriated invective which quickly slurred together into an incomprehensible mess.  After a shockingly short slow burn—more of a fast burn, really—Curt got to his feet, told Arthur to wait there, and walked away from the table.  The enraged fan followed him, still screaming obscenities.  To Arthur’s concern, they walked right out of the front door of the restaurant.  He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, left alone in a restaurant with an expensive dinner he couldn’t possibly pay for.  But if he tried to follow Curt, he’d certainly be _expected_ to pay for it.  And what if Curt didn’t come back?

            Fortunately, Curt returned before Arthur could even approach panic.  As Curt drew near the table, Arthur saw that he was shaking his hand out.

            “Fucker had a really hard head,” he commented as he sat down again.

            “You didn’t seriously punch him, did you?”

            “Of course I did!  What the fuck else was I gonna do?  That guy was totally wasted.  He won’t remember it happened.”

            “Curt…what if someone saw?”

            Curt laughed.  “Lots of people saw.  But he swung at me first, so it’s okay.”

            “No, that’s still not okay.  You’ll end up in the tabloids.”

            “As long as people remember I exist, fine by me,” Curt assured him.  “Looking like a bad boy is good for my reputation.”

            “Is that…is that really how it works?”  It didn't seem likely to Arthur in the slightest.

            “Yeah, it is.  And as long as I don’t end up behind bars again, I’m cool.”

            “What if that fellow presses charges?”  Or if any of the witnesses reported it to the police…

            “He won’t, ‘cause he was the one in the wrong.  Just fucking drop it already!”

            “All right,” Arthur said, returning his attention to his dinner.  He didn’t agree with any of what Curt had said, but he didn’t want to ruin their date, either.  What little of it they were getting to have.  The longer they sat there, the more he became aware of the fact that the other patrons at the restaurant kept looking at them.  At Curt, anyway.  But that constant scrutiny meant they couldn’t get the least bit romantic, which took something away from it as a date in the conventional sense…

            After the waiter had cleared away the dishes from their entrées and taken their dessert orders, Arthur began to feel oppressed by the silence.  “Um…so, you said you changed the lyrics to that song you performed last night?”

            “Yeah, the verses.  Well, they weren’t really finished anyway,” Curt said with a laugh.

            “I’d like to hear them,” Arthur said, smiling at him.  “Maybe I could help you with them, even.”

            “I’m sure you could,” Curt replied, giving him a knowing look.  “But man…”  He shook his head.  “The first draft of the lyrics…it was pretty much pornographic.  You still want to hear it?” he added, with a mischievous grin.

            “I do,” Arthur assured him, though he could feel his cheeks heating up as he said it.

            After that, it was hard for Arthur to keep his mind on the restaurant, or all the people staring at Curt.  By the time they were leaving the place, he couldn’t even remember if he had eaten his dessert.  As soon as they got in the car, Curt said “Fuck the movie.  Let’s just go back to my place.”

            Arthur couldn’t even summon up the words to answer with, just nodding his head and sliding one hand onto Curt’s thigh.  Thankfully, they weren’t pulled over by the police en route, despite that Curt was driving quite recklessly.  Arthur didn’t get a chance to see the building’s exterior, but judging by the car park underneath, it was filled with relatively well-off people:  the cars were well-tended and fairly expensive, but not excessively expensive.

            There were security cameras in the car park and the lift, so they had to continue pretending that they were only friends.  Curt filled the awkward silence by telling Arthur a little bit about his neighbours, but Arthur wasn’t really taking it in.  He didn’t care if the lady down the hall was hot, or if the stock broker on the floor below was making a killing on Wall Street.  They were all meaningless.  Nothing mattered but getting to be alone with Curt.

            Curt’s was a penthouse flat, with hard wood floors that hadn’t seen a sweeping in years.  The décor was spartan at best, but the television and stereo were top of the line.  Arthur didn’t have much chance to see any of it at first, though, because as soon as he had shut the door, Curt started kissing him.  For several minutes, Arthur allowed himself to be swept away by the kisses, revelling in the moment.

            But then he pulled out of it.  “You promised you’d play that song for me,” he reminded Curt.

            “After.”

            “No, first,” Arthur insisted.  “To get me in the mood.”

            Curt ran the palm of his hand over Arthur’s crotch.  “You’re already in the fucking mood!  Come on, you can’t make me wait for no reason!”

            Arthur just looked at him.

            Curt grimaced, and turned away from Arthur, moving into the kitchen.  “All right, fine.  Go sit down on the couch.”

            Arthur sat down, and Curt soon joined him, drinking from a can of beer.  “Here, have the rest,” he said, pressing the can into Arthur’s hands.  “Music’s not as much fun if you’re totally fucking sober.”

            Arthur laughed, and had the rest of the beer while Curt got his guitar out of its case and started tuning it.  Arthur watched his every motion, especially as he started playing the song, mesmerised by seeing it so close up, and just for him.

            Curt barely got through the first half dozen bars of the intro before he stopped playing and dumped the guitar in a nearby chair.  “No way!” he shouted, moving over to the sofa.  “You’re too fucking sexy!  I can’t just play it with you sitting there staring at me like that!”  Curt knelt down on the sofa, straddling Arthur.  “I’ll play it after.  I promise.”

            “Well…as long as you keep your promise, I guess that’s okay,” Arthur laughed, as Curt leaned in to kiss him.


	7. Chapter 7

            Waking up in Curt’s arms was the kind of thing that Arthur had spent the last ten years dreaming about.  It was fairly chilly in the flat, but the heat of Curt’s body pressed up behind him made Arthur comfortably warm.

            However, he couldn’t let childish wish-fulfilment get in the way of reality, so when Curt suggested that they work up an appetite for breakfast by having sex, Arthur had to refuse.  “I’ve got work I need to do today,” he explained.

            “But it’s Saturday!”

            “I know, but I’ve got a big story due next week.  I’ll be spendin’ all day researchin’ it.”  Sometimes, journalism was uncomfortably like being back in school.

            Curt grumbled about it considerably, but eventually admitted that Arthur had every right to be worried about getting his job done well, though he seemed a bit petulant as he watched Arthur getting ready to leave the flat.

            “When can I see you again?”  The question took Arthur by surprise, especially because of the vulnerable—almost wounded—tone of voice in which it was asked.

            “Tonight?” Arthur suggested.  Maybe a bit too eagerly, but it brightened Curt’s mood considerably, and soon Arthur was promising to call as soon as he was done at the library.

            It was the kind of lengthy, painstaking research that might drive any man to distraction, but Arthur had discovered that he had an unfortunate talent for it.  He was good at being thorough, which meant he kept getting stuck with these sorts of assignments.  At least this time he had a nice reward waiting for him at the end of the day…

            As soon as he felt like he had put in a full day’s work, Arthur went to the nearest pay phone and called Curt, telling him he was on his way over to Curt’s flat.  Of course, it took a while to get there on the subway, so Curt was rather impatient by the time Arthur arrived.

            For their second date, they went to see a movie—not the one Curt had made with Teresa, of course—before going to get a nice dinner.  Naturally, the evening ended with returning to Curt’s flat for more lovely sex.

            The next morning, Arthur was awakened by Curt pulling him closer in the bed.  “I could get addicted to this,” Curt sighed, stroking Arthur’s hip.

            “Me, too,” Arthur agreed.

            “You can stay today.  Right?”

            Arthur shifted his position, moving onto his back so he could look at Curt’s face.  “I can stay for a while,” he said, smiling.  “All morning should be no problem.  But I’ve got to go back to my own flat in the afternoon.  I’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

            “So being a reporter sucks, huh?”

            Arthur laughed.  “Sometimes.  But sometimes I get a story that lets me meet up with amazin’ people,” he added, reaching up one hand to push some of Curt’s hair out of his face.

            Curt smiled, and leaned down to kiss him.

 

***

 

            It was Tuesday evening when Curt called next.  “Hey, let’s go out tonight,” he said, as casually as anything.  “I’m horny,” he added, equally casually, if not more so.

            Arthur grimaced, fighting off a weary sigh.  “I’d love to, but I really can’t.  My deadline’s tomorrow, and I’m nowhere near done with the story.”

            “What the fuck are you writing about, anyway?  Is that the same story as before?  I thought you’d be done with it by now.”

            Arthur laughed.  “The election, of course.  It’s likely to be most of what I write about from now until November.  This particular article’s about the growin’ difference between the rich and the poor, and how Reynolds’ policies are makin’ it worse.”

            “That’s not an article:  that’s a fucking _book_.”

            “Several of ‘em, if I was tellin’ the whole story,” Arthur sighed.  “But it’ll be worth the effort if it helps swing the election results.”

            “Even if it gets New York to give Reynolds the boot, won’t do any good unless the other states do the same.  Don’t suppose your paper’s national?”

            “‘Course not.  But sometimes a good piece can get picked up over the wire,” Arthur added.  “I’ve got to do what I can.”

            “Yeah.”  An uncomfortable pause followed.  “Well, do you at least have time for dinner?”

            “I think I can spare that long,” Arthur said.  He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t bear the idea of outright refusing the date.  He’d just have to stay up a little later tonight, working on the story.

            They arranged to meet at a nice, but relatively casual restaurant about halfway between their neighbourhoods, to minimise the time Arthur would have to waste in transit.  Curt still got there first, unfortunately, and by the time Arthur approached the table, there were half a dozen people clustered around, asking Curt questions, mostly about Teresa Garcia.  Seeing that Arthur had arrived, Curt got rid of them by explaining that Arthur was “an old friend, in from London.  I haven’t seen him for ten years, so I don’t wanna waste his time dealing with all of you.”  The fans were very understanding, and left without a quarrel.

            “Is Teresa Garcia really that popular?” Arthur asked, once they were alone.

            “Yeah, Tee seems to have hit the top, lately,” Curt sighed.  “Fucking irritating, seeing someone I’m used to thinking of as a little kid outselling me.”

            Arthur laughed.  “How did you end up gettin’ to know a child from the west coast?”

            “Through her brother Emilio, like she said.”

            “Yeah, but…were you and he, um, involved?” Arthur asked, lowering his volume level on the last word, lest anyone else hear it.

            “I was interested, but he’s completely straight,” Curt sighed.  “Shame about that; he’s way hotter than she’ll ever be.”  He shrugged, even as Arthur chuckled.  “Emilio had a band, too, and I used to run into him a lot at shows and contests in the late ‘60s.  First time I did a performance in LA, I looked him up while I was there.  Met his whole family, but Tee’s really the only one I bonded with.  She was the cutest little kid, always running around and climbing things, never cared if she fell and scraped her face up.  Kinda reminded me of myself, I guess.”

            Arthur laughed.  “Imagine what her fans would say if you told them _that_.”

            “I probably should, but…my manager’s told me not to talk much about knowing Tee as a kid.  Or maybe that was just a message from Tee’s manager.”  He shrugged.  “My manager’s a real nightmare, so I try not to get her too wound up.  She hits a lot harder than Jack did.”

            “Oh, was that her at the taping?  The one who came out while you were, ah, disruptin’ things?”

            “Yeah.  She’s a real harridan.”  Curt scowled.  “Actually, she treats me the same way she treats her four year old when he’s been bad.”

            “She hits her son?”

            “Okay, except that.  She’d never hit _him_.  Just me.”

            “Why do you stay with someone like that?” Arthur asked.

            “Management companies aren’t too keen on representing ex-cons,” Curt sighed.  “But Emilio and Tee were in New York to visit me in prison, right?  Emilio was playing some gigs to pay for the trip.  Tee had joined his band by that point, and someone realised she might be able to make it big, and signed her.  So when I got out, she pulled some strings to help me get a new manager.  But I was pretty much told that if I blew it with this one, that was it; my career would be dead.”

            “They travelled all the way to New York just to visit you in jail?  But you weren’t even locked up all that long.”

            Curt shrugged.  “Well, Emilio knew what it was like.  He’d had some pretty bad drug problems in the ‘70s, too, so he thought no one else would be there for me.”

            “ _Was_ anyone else there for you?” Arthur asked, feeling a sudden pang of remorse that he’d never tried to find an excuse to visit the prison.

            “Well, Mandy visited a couple of times, but like you said, I really wasn’t even in the joint that long.”

            Arthur shook his head sadly.  “That seems a bit heartless,” he commented.

            “What does?”

            “She was visitin’ to gloat?”

            Curt laughed.  Hard.  “No, no, we’re actually pretty good friends.  I mean, we don’t see each other all that often, but we’re real friendly when we _do_ see each other.  She always turns to me when she’s having problems, and keeps telling me I should reach out to her if I need help, but…fuck!  That’d be embarrassing, turning to my ex’s ex for help.”

            “I’d think so,” Arthur agreed.  He wanted to ask Curt if he knew what kind of threats had been used to keep Mandy quiet about Brian’s new identity, but in public was hardly the place to ask.  And Curt probably wouldn’t have told him even if he knew.

            Their conversation was soon derailed by the arrival of the waiter to take their order—though Arthur hadn’t actually looked at the menu yet, so he had to order a bit more thoughtlessly than he usually liked—and after the waiter left, they started talking about less serious things.  Movies, television programmes, books, all the frivolous topics that it felt somehow a waste to discuss when their time was so limited.  But they couldn’t talk about politics, because Reynolds was too popular and they might anger those around them, and they couldn’t talk about their burgeoning relationship, because who knows what everyone might do if they realised they were witnessing a date, not a dinner between old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a long time.

            When the evening was over, and Arthur went to the subway station to go back to his flat, Curt followed him to the platform.  “Are you sure you can’t spare at least another couple of hours?” he asked.  His voice was trembling just a little.

            “I wish I could.  But if I don’t have the rough finished by tomorrow morning, I’ll lose my job for sure,” Arthur told him.  “I’ve got to go.”

            Curt nodded.  “Maybe I could give you a job somehow…”

            “I like bein’ a journalist,” Arthur assured him.  “I’ll call you later,” he added, as his train pulled up to the platform.

            Curt stood on the platform and watched Arthur through the window of the train as the subway departed the station.  The sight made something ache inside Arthur, but what could he do?  If he lost his job, he wouldn’t be able to pay his rent, and then what?  No matter how much Curt was enjoying having sex with him, there was no way he’d invite Arthur to move in with him, no matter how much Arthur might wish for that.  What they had was simply physical.  It was only an idle dream to expect anything more than that.


	8. Chapter 8

            It had taken him half the night, but Arthur managed—somehow!—to get his rough draft finished up in time to turn it in first thing in the morning.  Yet after all his hard work, Lou wasn’t in his office to accept the draft.  He didn’t turn up until midmorning, and then he had a younger man with him.  The other man looked to be about Curt’s age, but he couldn’t have been less like Curt:  he was dressed in an expensive suit, had short, carefully groomed hair, and a perpetual expression of distaste as he looked around him, as if everything he saw was as far beneath him as a the dirt under a pauper’s grave.

            “Oh, Arthur, have you met Theo yet?” Lou asked, gesturing to the other man.

            “Theodore,” the man corrected, his voice cold and cutting.  Theo the Knife.

            “Theo here is the son of Cornelius Kaufmann, and currently a VP over at CMA,” Lou continued, ignoring the correction.

            The son of the CEO of the company that owned the _Herald_ was a big shot at CMA?  Why had Arthur never come across _that_ information before?  CMA was a notoriously conservative company—and one of the biggest contributors to President Reynolds’ campaign fund.  Arthur had never much cared what happened to Cornelius Kaufmann—despite that the fellow was, technically, his employer—but suddenly he felt quite invested in hoping that the man would live a very long life:  Cornelius personally owned more than half the company’s stock, making his position essentially an inheritable one.

            “Theo, this is Arthur Stuart, one of our reporters,” Lou continued.  “He’s still a bit green, but he’s already one of the best we’ve got.  Real flair for the job.”

            “Hmm.”  Theodore looked over Arthur slowly, with a judgemental eye.  His frown intensified the longer he spent at it, until a sudden, callous smile spread over his lips.  “Pleased to meet you,” he said, extending a hand towards Arthur.

            “Oh, uh, yeah, nice meetin’ you, too,” Arthur said, as he moved to shake the offered hand.

            Theodore withdrew his hand as if he thought Arthur’s would burn the flesh off it.  “You’re not an American!” he shrieked.

            Arthur couldn’t withhold a chuckle.  “You noticed that, huh?”

            “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Lou said, setting a hand on Theodore’s shoulder.  “I’m sure some pretty girl will make an American of Arthur soon enough.”

            “I’m not really the marryin’ kind,” Arthur sighed.  Getting married led to children and domesticity and the terrifying idea of turning into his father.  A long, lonely and miserable life was far preferable to _that_ fate.  Though Arthur was hoping to find a middle ground between those two unpleasant extremes.  Preferably one that involved Curt.

            “Why would my father employ a foreigner in a position that had the potential to exert influence over the American people?” Theodore muttered.

            Lou sighed, and gave Arthur a tired smile.  “You can just leave the draft on my desk,” he said.  “I’ll look over it as soon as I’m done with Theo.”

            Arthur nodded, and did as he had been asked, but he was concerned by whole exchange.  Theodore’s reaction would have been one thing if his accent had been Russian or eastern European, but were there really Americans who still saw England as an enemy?  The two countries hadn’t been enemies since the Napoleonic wars…

            Since he had some time to kill while he waited for Lou to give him revision notes, Arthur went into the lounge and used the phone to call Curt.  He didn’t have anything important to say—and had to be careful what he _did_ say, since Mary was sure to be listening—but it seemed like a better use of his time than simply sitting at his desk twiddling his fingers.  They mostly ended up talking about Curt’s plans for his next album.  He still only had about half an album’s worth of new songs, even counting the one that he had used in the movie, so he wanted advice about what kind of songs he should try to write to fill in the gaps:  fast or slow, light or heavy, love songs or sexy songs or strange, inscrutable songs.  Arthur generally preferred medium or fast, heavy, inscrutable songs, but there were already several of those ready, so he recommended mixing in one or two slower, more normal songs as well.  Otherwise the audience might get bored.

            Curt tried to steer the conversation to how he should re-write the verses to “The Stars Are Falling,” but Arthur was quite sure he couldn’t talk about that in a public setting.  As Curt had warned him, the initial draft of the lyrics was _quite_ pornographic.  Just thinking about a song that described his own arse in such intense detail made Arthur a little uncomfortable, though it turned him on none the less.  And that had only been the first verse.  The later verses…he was going to need a cold shower if he even thought about them.

 

***

 

            No matter what Lou might have told the _Herald_ ’s heir presumptive about Arthur’s natural gift for journalism, he still had a ridiculous number of revisions he wanted made to Arthur’s article about the economic problems caused by Martin Reynolds’ presidency, so many that Arthur had to stay until nearly eight o’clock getting the article finished, and the paper ended up being put to bed far later than usual because of his delay.

            Then, to cap it all off, Lou gave him another, even more research-intensive project.  Arthur’s next assignment was to come up with a comprehensive list of all of President Reynolds’ racist policies and remarks.  For the most part, Reynolds wasn’t fool enough to insult blacks or Asians, but his racism against Mexicans and other Hispanics was quite legendary.  Somehow that hadn’t hampered him yet—except in California and his native Florida, two states with very large Hispanic populations—but Lou seemed to hope that Arthur would be able to expose it all in such a way that it would damage Reynolds’ results in the New York primary.

            In all honesty, Arthur found that entirely unlikely, given the _Herald_ ’s circulation figures.  They didn’t sell enough papers to influence a large enough segment of the voting public.

            But he didn’t say that.  He just went to work looking for the information, burying himself in old news reports, not only from the last four years, but from the four years before that, when Reynolds had been in the Senate, and the decade before that, when he had been serving on the Florida State Legislature.  None of the individual incidents or policies seemed large by themselves, but compiled together even Arthur was astounded by it.

            What surprised him more, however, was just how much Reynolds’ homophobia had slipped past him.  The man consistently insulted his opponents by calling them effeminate, or otherwise implying that he thought them to be passive homosexuals, and he had repeatedly introduced anti-gay legislation at the state level.  The thought that such a man had been able to successfully obtain the highest office in the country—one of the most powerful offices in the world—sickened Arthur.  In fact, by the time Friday came around, he was quite sure he wasn’t going to be able to keep going without taking a break.

            There wasn’t really time, but he resolved to set work aside for the whole weekend.  Assuming that Curt was willing to make time for him.

            As soon as he was done on Friday afternoon, Arthur went to the nearest pay phone and called Curt.  “I was hopin’ maybe I could come over tonight,” he explained.  “Maybe we could go to the cinema or…?”

            “There aren’t many movies to see in the theatres right now, but I’ve got a VCR and a membership at a video rental store,” Curt said.  “We could watch anything you want.  Oldies, romance, porn…”

            Arthur laughed.  “I don’t think we need to watch pornography.”  He had no trouble becoming aroused at the idea of being alone with Curt, and aroused seemed to be Curt’s natural state.  “But if there’s anything else you want to rent, that’s fine with me.”

            “Hmm…it’s a tough call,” Curt sighed.  “What do you want for dinner?”

            “I’m not really picky about that, either,” Arthur admitted.  “As long as it’s with you, anything is fine.”

            “God, don’t try making me horny _now_!” Curt objected.  “It’ll be at least an hour before we can start fucking!”

            “Well, why don’t you pick something to watch from what you’ve got there,” Arthur suggested, since Curt’s video library was quite extensive, “if you’re already too aroused to leave the flat.  I’ll pick up dinner for us on the way.”

            Curt agreed to that plan, and made several suggestions for good take-out places near his flat.  Arthur eventually settled on the Chinese place, since it was the most conveniently located.

            When he got to the flat, Arthur found that Curt had picked out a surprisingly sentimental romance for them to watch—all the more surprising considering that it wasn’t a rental, but a tape Curt actually owned—and had lit a dozen or more candles around the television and the couch so they wouldn’t have to turn on the blaring overhead lights.  The food was excellent, and the romantic atmosphere did a lot to help Arthur relax and forget the stress of his week, but the movie was almost nauseatingly sappy.  Still, even that had its own entertainment value, because he got to watch as Curt became completely wrapped up in the ridiculous tragic romance.  Arthur would never have guessed that Curt liked that kind of thing, and he found it completely enchanting.  He couldn’t help wondering just how many—or how few—people Curt had trusted with the secret:  crying like a little child as he watched a movie he had seen many times before would hardly enhance the reputation of a hardened rock star with a tough, violent image.

            Of course, the romantic movie—tragic ending notwithstanding—left Curt in the mood for real life romance, or at least for sex.  Though Arthur was beginning to think that absolutely _everything_ —including toothpaste commercials—left Curt in the mood for sex.  Naturally, Arthur had no objections to helping Curt satisfy his desires.  That had been what Arthur wanted in the first place, after all!

            But as he drifted off to sleep afterwards, something about it was nagging at Arthur.  When he woke up again, he realized what it was that had been bothering him.  If Curt was so easily aroused, what did he do when he wasn’t in a steady relationship?  Worse still, what did he do when he _was_ in a steady relationship, but couldn’t be with his partner?  If, by some miracle, they managed to make whatever it was they had right now into a proper, long-term relationship, there were sure to be times when they’d be apart for days or even weeks at a time.  Curt might go out on tour, or Arthur might get sent to another city for a story.  Then what?  Would Curt cheat on him?

            Arthur didn’t like that idea any, yet what right would he have to object?  They were barely even dating right now; it would be silly to get upset about the possibility that Curt might cheat on him after they became more serious.  Especially considering the way they had first met.  Curt had clearly been hoping that Brian would come back to him at that concert, and Arthur hadn’t told him that Brian really had been in the audience.  Their very first encounter had been purely physical, and based on the omission of a very important truth.

            The more he thought about that first night ten years ago, the more Arthur realised something odd about the way they had renewed their acquaintance.  He mulled it over for at least half an hour, until Curt finally woke up, and he could ask the question that was suddenly niggling him:  “When did you first recognise me?”

            “Huh?”

            Maybe it was too early for this conversation, but having already started it, what else could Arthur do but keep going with it?  “In that pub two weeks ago, you didn’t seem to remember who I was,” he explained, “so when did you start to realise we’d met before?”

            Curt started laughing.  “You’re asking that _now_?”  He shook his head.  “Why didn’t you ask that back in the dressing room or something?”

            “Well…I only just thought of it…”

            That only seemed to amuse Curt further.  “You really are an odd one,” he commented, stroking Arthur’s cheek with the backs of two fingers.

            “Uh…”

            “I did actually realise it in the bar, you know,” Curt told him.  “Just not at first.”  He sighed, and rolled over onto his back, looking up at the ceiling.  “It was when we were talking about the pin.  I don’t know if it was the angle, or the look on your face, or just thinking about…that had been a really idyllic time, when he gave me that.  But what we had that night was pretty idyllic, too.”

            “I’ve always thought so,” Arthur agreed, kissing his cheek gently.

            “It didn’t really seem like a good time to say anything, though,” Curt went on, with a frown.  “Given…everything.”

            “What about the song?” Arthur asked, lifting his head to get a better look at Curt’s face.  “When did that…when did you write it?”

            Curt chuckled.  “That was one of those flashes of inspiration, you know?  It was…when was that?  Two, three years ago, maybe.  I was having this little thing with some obnoxious chick with big tits.  She was okay in bed, but nothing special.  Thing is, she seemed to think she was off the charts.  Kept asking me what the best sex I’d ever had was, making it pretty fucking obvious she expected me to say that _she_ was.  No way was I gonna lie and claim she was, especially not when she was being that annoying about it.”  Curt glanced over at Arthur and laughed.  “Don’t get your hopes up.  My first thought was to tell her about this one really great night with Brian.  But this wasn’t more than a week after the first time a Tommy Stone album went gold.  I couldn’t stand the idea of mentioning Brian, so I was trying to think of other really great sex.  And that’s when I thought of you.  And that song just pretty much wrote itself while I was thinking about it.”

            “If it was that long ago, why hadn’t you ever performed the song before?”

            Curt laughed roughly.  “Couldn’t think of any new lyrics.  And I didn’t think it’d be a good idea to put it out there as it was.  Can you imagine how people in Reynolds’ America would react if I released a song about how great it felt to fuck a beautiful teenage boy?”

            Though he tried to fight it, Arthur was soon laughing.  “I’d like to see that, actually,” he said between chortles.  “The looks on their faces…!”

            “Yeah, it’d be hilarious until they found an excuse to lock me up for it,” Curt sighed.

            “Mmm…they probably would, wouldn’t they?”  Arthur frowned.  “It’s hard to believe the world could change so much in ten years.”

            “Yeah.”  There was a long pause, in which Curt slowly started to look concerned.  “Hey…are you…you’re not gonna go right off to work again, are you?”

            “I was hopin’ I could stay all weekend.  I’ve got a lot of stress I need to get rid of,” Arthur said, perhaps a bit self-consciously.  It was more than a little presumptive of him to use Curt as a stress cure, after all.

            But Curt grinned at him, reaching one hand over to start fondling him.  “I can _definitely_ arrange that!”


	9. Chapter 9

            Late Saturday afternoon, they were cuddled up on the couch, watching an old movie on television.  They’d both seen it before, but they’d come across it while flipping through the channels and decided to stick with it, because—as Curt put it—“the leads are kinda hot.”  It wasn’t an especially good movie, but the chance to just sit back and relax, cuddled up against Curt’s side, more than made up for that.

            By the time the telephone rang, Arthur was so relaxed that he had almost forgotten that the outside world existed.  Curt answered the phone, then quickly started frowning.  “Look, Alicia, can I call you right back?” he asked, then hung up the phone.  “Sorry about this,” he said, as he got up off the sofa.  “It’s my manager.  I’ve got a lot of important stuff I need to talk to her about.”

            “You could’ve talked to her in here.  I wouldn’t tell anyone anything I heard,” Arthur assured him.

            “That’s not—that’s not what I was worried about.”  Curt leaned in and kissed him briefly.  “Just don’t worry about it, okay?  I’ll be back soon.”  Then he went into the bedroom and shut the door.

            Part of Arthur was a bit hurt that Curt didn’t want to discuss his business in front of him, but he tried to tell himself that it was just that Curt didn’t want to disrupt the movie on the television, not that he had secret business to conduct.  Or maybe that he was expecting his manager to harangue him about something, and couldn’t stand the idea of Arthur overhearing him getting such a dressing-down.

            Arthur knew it would be rude to try to listen in on Curt’s telephone conversation.  He would never have dreamed of picking up the receiver and eavesdropping outright.  But it wasn’t unusual for Curt to raise his voice while on the phone—even if he was just calling out for pizza—so it was essentially impossible not to overhear _some_ of it.  Unfortunately, despite how much of the conversation was conducted at a high volume, the only part Arthur could hear clearly from the sofa was one particularly worrisome exclamation:  “You gotta call it off!”

            All told, Curt was out of the room for about ten minutes, maybe fifteen.  When he came back and resumed his seat on the couch, he looked haggard, his eyes staring hollowly ahead of him.  Arthur hesitated a moment, biting his lip.  Part of him—perhaps the inner curiosity that served him well in his chosen profession—wanted desperately to ask what was wrong, but the rest of him realised that was surely the last thing Curt wanted.

            “You look like you need something,” Arthur commented instead.

            “Yeah, I could use a beer,” Curt grumbled, looking at the empty can sitting on the coffee table in front of him.

            “I was thinkin’ more along the lines of a blowjob,” Arthur said, sliding the fingers of one hand underneath the waistband of Curt’s jeans.

            “Oh, God, yes!”

            Chuckling, Arthur pushed the coffee table back a bit so he could kneel down in front of the sofa.  By the time he’d done that, Curt had already undone his jeans, and had his willy in his hand, pumping slightly.  Arthur swatted his hand away lightly.  “That’s my job,” he chided, making Curt laugh.

            Given the state he was in, Arthur thought it was important to make sure that Curt really got the most possible pleasure out of it, so he made sure to take his time, applying just the right amount of pressure to extend the experience as long as possible without letting it become frustrating.  It had been years since the last time he had done this, but he seemed to still have the knack, if Curt’s moans of pleasure were any indication.

            Arthur had forgotten just how good it could feel to dedicate himself to pleasing his partner like this, so it was actually quite disappointing when Curt suddenly started pushing his face away.  “Okay, stop, that’s enough,” Curt insisted, as he pulled his erection back out of Arthur’s mouth.

            “But—”

            “What if I’m infected?” Curt countered.  “You don’t want that in your mouth.”

            “Oh…but…”

            Curt was right.  Arthur knew that.  It was still disappointing, and far less romantic, however.  Trying to smile, he used his hands to finish bringing Curt to climax.  That, of course, had the negative result of his shirt being covered in semen.  With a noise of disgust, Arthur discarded his shirt, then climbed back up on the sofa, sitting beside Curt, but facing him, so they could kiss.

            As they were kissing, Curt slipped one hand down to the waistband of Arthur’s trousers.  After fumbling with the zip for several minutes, he pulled out of the kiss, muttering imprecations at the manufacturers.  Now that he could see what he was doing—and use both hands—Curt was easily able to finish opening Arthur’s trousers.  Then Curt resumed kissing Arthur, even as he wrapped his fingers around Arthur’s throbbing erection.

            Since he had gotten so excited earlier, it didn’t take long before Arthur, too, had climaxed, leaving an unpleasant splatter across the back of the leather sofa.  Curt quickly shrugged out of his own shirt and wiped it up, then tossed the shirt onto the floor with Arthur’s.

            “Ah…”  Arthur glanced over at the soiled shirts, wondering if he should be apologising for the mess.

            “We’ll do laundry later,” Curt told him, then kissed him sweetly.  “Thanks, by the way.  I needed that.”

            “See?  I knew you did,” Arthur chuckled, before lowering his head to rest on Curt’s shoulder.

            “Tired?”

            “Mm-hmm.”

            “Go on and take a nap,” Curt said.  “The movie’s still going; I’m fine.”

            Arthur laughed.  How had he forgotten to turn the television off first?  But if Curt was okay with it….

            He drifted off to sleep before he could even finish his thought, and didn’t wake up until Curt started shifting underneath him.  “Unnh?  What—what time is it?”

            “Five,” Curt told him.  “The news is starting.  I was trying to turn off the TV, but I couldn’t reach the remote.”

            “We should probably watch it,” Arthur told him.

            “You gotta be fucking kidding me!”

            “Ignorin’ the world won’t make it go away,” Arthur chuckled, as he shifted around to be able to see the television while still snuggling comfortably against Curt’s chest.  “Besides, I want to know what’s goin’ on with the election.”

            “Wasn’t that what made you so stressed out in the first place?”

            Arthur chuckled.  “Maybe Reynolds had a heart attack.”

            “That’d be nice,” Curt agreed, “but not very likely.  He’s only, what, fifty?”

            “Fifty-one.  But yeah, probably too young for it.”

            Curt grumbled under his breath, but allowed Arthur to watch the news otherwise unchallenged.  Of course, very little had happened in the election since he had last seen any news about it, but it was important to keep abreast even of the small changes.  Still, it wasn’t until the news report moved away from politics and into the world of entertainment that there was anything that really captured their attention.

            “Early this afternoon, the Committee for Cultural Renewal announced that they were planning a fund-raiser on the National Mall,” the newsreader said.

            “I hate those fuckers,” Curt growled, talking over the continuation of the report.  “They’re the goddamn Thought Police.  You know they routinely send out demands to all the management companies, telling them what they want changed in everyone’s acts?”

            “They actually make demands like that?” Arthur asked, shocked.  He’d heard rumours, of course, but he had hoped they weren't really true.  “Why doesn’t anyone come forward about it?”

            Curt laughed.  “You don’t know much about managers and agents.  They’re halfway between sharks and lawyers.  They don’t wanna tick anyone off, ‘cause then they might not be able to get money from ‘em later.”  He shook his head.  “They’re not gonna talk about it when the government starts putting pressure on them.”

            “But what kind of demands do they make?”

            “Enh, the usual.  ‘Have him record a song about how terrible drugs are.  Make him stop singing about sex.  If he doesn’t stop sleeping with men, he’s finished.  Have—’”  Curt’s mimicry of the committee’s demands suddenly stopped.  “What the fuck…?”

            Arthur followed Curt’s angry gaze back to the television screen.  The angled, double-pronged ‘T’ that was Tommy Stone’s logo was being projected behind the newsreader.  “Though the committee has not yet provided a full list of the acts that will be featured in their fund-raiser, they did say that Tommy Stone will be headlining the show,” the newsreader said.

            “That motherfucker!”  Curt leaned forward, pushing Arthur aside, so he could grab the remote control and throw it at the television screen.  Thankfully, it didn’t break the glass on the vacuum tube.  “Why the fuck would he want to be the pawn of a bunch of shitheads like those assholes?!”

            Arthur sighed as he got up and walked over to the television, switching it off.  “It was probably part of the price of having them protect him from anyone discovering his past.”

            “Are you _defending_ him?”

            “Did that sound like a defence?” Arthur asked, perplexed.  “It just seems like the most reasonable explanation.  Even if he actually does support Reynolds and his committee, it’s hardly likely he’d be doin’ stuff like that just because he likes him.  No one else does that for politicians they support.”

            Curt chuckled viciously.  “Maybe that’s what it is:  he _likes_ Reynolds.”

            “You mean…he fancies him?”  Arthur shuddered at the thought.  Although there were those who said that Martin Reynolds was the most attractive President in US history—or at least the most attractive since Kennedy—Arthur found the man thoroughly repulsive.

            “Seems probable to me,” Curt agreed, nodding.  “Brian’s never been picky; he’ll fuck anything.”

            Arthur sat down beside Curt, sliding one arm around him.  “Don’t say that,” he said quietly.

            “C’mon, be honest.  I’m not exactly a great catch, either.”

            “Of course you are!  Curt, you’re one of the sexiest men who’s ever lived, and a fantastic singer, and—”

            Curt cut him off by starting to laugh.  “Wow, you’ve really got it bad, huh?”

            Arthur’s whole face felt like it was on fire.  “Are you mockin’ me now?”

            “Not at all,” Curt promised him, before giving him a passionate kiss.


	10. Chapter 10

            Despite how much he didn’t want to, Monday morning Arthur returned to working on his article.  He did, after all, have a great deal of information to sift through and process, and the rough was due on Friday so that it could be thoroughly revised, reworked and—most likely—vetted before Monday’s paper went to bed on Sunday evening.  By Tuesday evening, Arthur was once again feeling quite stressed out, as well as depressed by how little of Reynolds’ racism and homophobia was known even among the other people at the _Herald_ , much less among the public at large.

            He didn’t think he had time for a proper de-stressing, but at least a nice dinner would help a lot.  So as soon as he got home, Arthur called Curt’s flat, but the line was busy.  He tried again every ten minutes for about half an hour, but the line remained busy.  Eventually, Arthur gave up, and went out to dinner by himself.

            It didn’t do much to relieve his stress, eating by himself in a cheap fast food place, listening to the other patrons talking.  The few who mentioned the election were all in favour of Reynolds.  Worse, more of them were talking about the Tommy Stone concert that was going to take place on the National Mall, and wondering if he was going to introduce any new songs.

            Finding he needed more of a pick-up than he had before dinner, Arthur headed to a record store once he was done eating.  He wanted to hear that wonderful song again:  after all, how many songs had ever been written about him?  Though Curt would surely give him a copy if he asked for one, buying it would hopefully provide a boost—no matter how small—to Curt’s career.

            The soundtrack to _He Done Her Wrong_ was not in the soundtrack section of the store; instead, it had been placed with Teresa Garcia’s other albums.  But all that mattered was that the very first track on the record was “Chicken Little (The Stars Are Falling)” which would make it much easier to listen to just that one song and not bother with the rest.

            There were a number of teenage boys gathered at the cash register, trying to chat up the university-age girl who was on duty.  When they saw what Arthur was buying, they all immediately started talking about the movie, and how disappointed they were that ‘Tee’ only had that one nude scene, right at the beginning, and even then “she only showed her tits!”  Arthur tried to interrupt them for the sake of the embarrassed young cashier, but they continued complaining, moving on to expressing their disgust at being forced to see “that old man’s ass.”

            “Personally,” Arthur said, in the most forceful tone he could manage, “I’d rather see Curt Wild’s arse than Teresa Garcia’s breasts.”

            The boys stared at him in horror, backed away, and then ran out of the store.  Arthur did his best not to start laughing until after the door had shut behind them.  “Thanks for getting rid of those creeps,” the girl at the register said, as she handed him his change.  “Have you seen the film?”

            “I haven’t,” Arthur admitted, “but I heard Curt perform his song on Harry Spooner’s show.”

            “Ah, I missed that!”  The girl sighed, and shook her head.  “I forgot to set my VCR.”

            “I’ve got an old friend in the band on the show; I was at the taping.”

            “Lucky!  I’d give just about anything to hear Curt Wild perform in person!  The live tracks on his albums are always so much better than the studio tracks.”

            “He’s always better in person,” Arthur agreed.  “He thrives off the audience’s excitement.  I’ve been to a number of his concerts.  I even saw him perform once in the ‘70s, at the height of his career.”

            “Ooh, one of his London concerts?!” the girl exclaimed excitedly.  “Was it one of his concerts with Brian Slade?”

            Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “Ah, no, it was…just after that…”

            The girl bit her lip for a moment.  “Oh…I’m sorry.  Are you, um, one of those people who…were really upset by what he did?  I mean, the fake death and all?”

            Arthur smiled, and shook his head.  “I should be, but for some reason I was never angry about it, even though I was there.”

            “You were…you were _there_?!  When he was—when he faked getting killed?!  You were in the audience?”  She was leaning forward as she spoke, and seemed like she might vault right over the counter.

            Arthur nodded, a little taken aback by her excitement.

            The girl grabbed a pen and a slip of paper from behind the counter, and started writing something.  “Um, look, I’m taking a class on documentary filmmaking at NYU,” she explained as she was writing, “and I was hoping to do the final project of the semester on Slade’s stunt.  You know, since it’s the tenth anniversary and all?”  She finished writing, and held out the slip of paper towards Arthur.  “If you wouldn’t mind, could you maybe let me interview you for my project?”

            Arthur hesitated a moment before taking the paper.  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with bein’ filmed for anything,” he said, “but I might be able to put you in touch with someone else who'd be more open to it.”  He wondered if Mandy would be willing to be interviewed.  For that matter, he wondered if Mandy would be _permitted_ to be interviewed.  Those people who interfered with his story might interfere with this girl’s documentary.  Though perhaps not, if she wasn’t actively trying to learn anything about Brian’s _current_ whereabouts…

            “I’d really appreciate it,” the girl said, smiling at him.  “Almost everyone else in the class is going to do their project on the election.  As if there wasn’t enough footage of that being shot every day for the news.  So I want to do something really interesting and _different_ , you know?”

            “It certainly couldn’t be further from the election,” Arthur agreed, with a bit of an inner pang.  Saying that a story about Brian Slade was nothing to do with the election felt too much like a lie, given that his new persona was in bed with—hopefully only in a figurative sense—President Reynolds.

            The girl looked as though she wanted to keep talking, but fortunately another customer came up to buy a record, so Arthur wished her luck in her class, and left the shop.  He was, after all, eager to get home and listen to Curt sing that beautifully poignant refrain about their night together ten years ago…


	11. Chapter 11

            When Arthur picked up Thursday morning’s paper, he was in for a bit of a shock.  Buried on page three was a story about a change in ownership in the company that owned the _Herald_.  The board had convened early Wednesday morning, because Cornelius Kaufmann, CEO and primary stockholder of the company, had taken suddenly ill.  His illness was described in the kind of non-specific terms that Arthur associated with badly covered up poisonings in mystery novels.  In light of Kaufmann’s illness, the board had forced him to resign, and his son had stepped in to take his position, in the process signing the whole company over to become a subsidiary of the conglomerate CMA.  As a result, Theodore Kaufmann was now the nominal CEO, and the entire company— _Herald_ included—had a new position:  right in Martin Reynolds’ pocket.

            Horrified, Arthur could only pray that the chaos of the change-over would prevent the new boss from paying any attention to the _Herald_.  After all, the company owned much more than just a newspaper.  But as he was getting ready to leave work that afternoon, Lou stopped by his desk.

            “Bad news, Arthur,” he said, frowning.

            Arthur braced himself.  Was it _bad_ news, or the _worst_ news?

            “I’m afraid Theo’s sent word down about subjects we can and can’t cover from now on,” Lou told him, shaking his head, “and the story you’ve been working on for the past week…”

            “You’re cancellin’ it?  _Again_?”

            “It’s completely outside my control,” the old man said sadly.  “You know I wanted to see this story printed; it was my idea, after all.”  Even after he finished talking, Lou just stood there, looking at Arthur with a mournful, pensive expression.

            “What aren’t you tellin’ me?”

            Lou let out a slow breath.  “He’s eager to pare down our staff.  Don’t—please don’t give him any excuse to fire you.”

            “I’m a foreigner,” Arthur reminded him.  “Isn’t that reason enough for someone like that?”

            “Arthur, calm down.”

            “I am calm.”  On the outside, at any rate.

            “I’m not going to let him get away with random firings,” Lou assured him.  “But you know he’s already biased against you.  If you step out of line, I won’t be able to hold him back.  He’s the boss now.”

            Arthur bit back a nasty retort.  It wasn’t Lou’s fault.  There was no reason to snap at him.  After a deep breath, Arthur was just barely able to thank the old man for his concern, and assure him that he’d be careful.  Lou still looked concerned as he walked away.

            For the entire trip back to his flat, Arthur couldn’t help dwelling on everything he had gone through for the past week.  What had been the bloody point of tormenting himself by looking up all of Reynolds’ racist and homophobic policies if he couldn’t even _write_ the story on the subject, let alone print it?  He could have spent that time lounging around his flat doing absolutely _nothing_ for all that good it had done him!

            Better yet, he could have spent all that time with Curt, enjoying himself.  So why hadn’t he?  Why was he torturing himself trying to do a job no one wanted him to do?  One they wouldn’t even _let_ him do?

            By the time he was home, Arthur wasn’t sure if he wanted to throw something or if he wanted to curl up in a corner and weep.  Either way, he didn’t want to give in.  With shaking hands, he dialled Curt’s number, but once again got a busy signal.  Why was Curt always on the phone lately?  Who the hell was he talking to?

            After pacing back and forth for a few minutes, Arthur tried again, but the call still couldn’t go through.  Giving in to a moment of extreme frustration, he threw the phone across the room.  Somehow, that kind of thing had always _seemed_ like it would be cathartic, but it didn’t make him feel any better, and it had actually hurt his arm a little.

            There was nothing for it.  There was only one thing that was going to make him feel better.  And if Curt was on the telephone, then at least he was home.

            Arthur quickly changed his clothes, putting on something nice, just in case Curt wanted to go out.  He picked up the phone and put it back on the desk where it belonged, then left his flat again, headed for the subway station.

            It felt like the trains were running far slower than usual, but eventually Arthur made it to the building where Curt lived.  The lift in Curt’s building—unlike the one in Arthur’s—was in perfect repair, moving swiftly and relatively quietly.  He made his way quickly to the door and rang the bell.  For several minutes, a deep silence was the only response, and Arthur had a sudden horror that perhaps the reason he had gotten a busy signal was that the phone was off the hook.  What if Curt had spent the last two days lying on the floor unconscious—or worse, dead—and no one knew about it?  If that was the case, Arthur would have to try to break the door down, or perhaps there was a landlord with a master key, or—

            Arthur’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door.  After another moment, Curt opened the door, looking out at him with confusion.  “Arthur?  What the fuck…?  Why didn’t you call first?”

            “Your bloody phone’s been busy all week!”

            Curt winced slightly.  “Sorry.  My manager won’t listen to a damned word I say.”  He bit his lip for a moment.  “Uh…you wanna come in?”

            Arthur nodded, and Curt stepped aside to let him in, closing the door behind him.  Arthur clenched his eyes shut, trying to fight off the desire to tell Curt why he had needed to see him.  Curt didn’t want to know that, and it wouldn’t help anything to re-open the wounds by talking about it, surely.  But he couldn’t fend it off for long, and soon he was telling the whole story, his hands balling up into fists as he gave in to tears of rage.

            When Arthur finished his rant, Curt pulled him into his arms, stroking his back gently.  “That’s one shitty week,” he sighed.  “Just try and forget about it, okay?”

            “You’re goin’ to do something to help distract me, right?”  After all that, if Curt didn’t want to have sex with him, Arthur was seriously going to lose his mind!

            “You know I am!” Curt laughed.  “Have you eaten yet, or do you want to go straight to bed?”

            “I ‘aven’t eaten, but we can just go right to bed if you want,” Arthur said, rather hoping that was exactly what Curt wanted.

            “I haven’t had dinner yet, either, and I didn’t have much lunch, so I’m gonna be half-starved if I don’t eat something first,” Curt told him with a chuckle.  “Go on and sit down, and I’ll call for a pizza.  I know a place that delivers fast.  Pick out something to watch while I’m calling.”  Curt let go of him, and headed into the kitchen.  “The porn’s stashed behind the regular tapes,” he called from the kitchen.

            “I’m not watchin’ porn!” Arthur insisted, with a laugh he wouldn’t have expected himself to be capable of producing after the day he’d had.  As he headed into the living room, Arthur wondered absently why Curt would bother to hide his pornographic movies.  Surely he didn’t care what anyone else thought of his viewing tastes.  Unless he often had girls over to his flat…

            Arthur shook his head to banish that thought.  That sort of thinking was only going to mire him further in his miserable state.  Right now, the only thing he was going to think about was what he and Curt could do to make each other feel good.  Everything else could wait.

            Tonight was just about him and Curt.


	12. Chapter 12

            Dragging himself out of bed took every ounce of Arthur’s mental fortitude.  It was earlier than usual, and they’d stayed up half the night making love, so he was exhausted.  And it was never easy to climb out of bed when he could instead stay there, still encircled by Curt’s arms.  But if he didn’t show up to work precisely on time, then he might as well just turn in his resignation and be done with it.  The new boss wanted an excuse to be rid of him, and a petty excuse like failing to turn up at the office at the appropriate hour seemed like it would be precisely Theodore Kaufmann’s cup of tea.

            Coming in smelling like sweat, semen and another man’s cigarettes would also be an excellent way to get fired, so Arthur took a hasty shower before scanning Curt’s cabinets for something he could have in the way of breakfast.  There really wasn’t anything.  But if he left now, he should be able to catch the train in time to grab something in between the station and the _Herald_ office…

            Arthur was almost out of the flat by the time Curt started calling out to him to wait.  “I can’t—I’ll be late for work if I don’t leave now!” Arthur shouted back.  “I’ll call you when I get home tonight,” he added, before leaving the flat.

            The whole time he was walking to the station, Arthur couldn’t help worrying that he had just destroyed whatever relationship they had.  Curt could get very irritated when things didn’t go precisely the way he wanted, and he wasn’t really known for being terribly forgiving.  Arthur hated himself for being such a fool as to privilege his job—which he was undoubtedly going to lose anyway—over the man he loved, but…he was supposed to be a reasonable, rational adult, and that meant placing duty above pleasure.  Didn’t it?

            “Arthur, wait!”

            He was actually already on the platform at the subway station by the time Curt caught up to him.  Unshaven—though with his pale stubble it was harder to tell that—with his uncombed hair only roughly pulled back into a ponytail, and his body stuffed into wrinkled old clothes that were probably none too clean, Curt looked like a mess, but the expression on his face was more worried than angry, really.

            “Curt, what…?”

            “Where the fuck are you in such a hurry to get to?” Curt demanded.

            “Work.  It’s a weekday.  If I don’t go to work, I’ll lose my job.”

            “Oh…yeah…but…I thought you said you were gonna lose it anyway.”

            Arthur shrugged.  “Probably, but I don’t want to just hand them the excuse.  I need my job if I’m to continue payin’ the rent on my flat.”

            Curt let out an awkward noise, not quite a sigh, but not really anything else, either.  “It’s just…”

            “Just what?”

            Rather than answering right away, Curt glanced around them.  There were a dozen or so other people on the platform, waiting for the train.  Curt grimaced, and shook his head.  “Look, it’s just…this isn’t a good place to talk,” he said quietly.

            “Can’t it wait until tonight?”

            “I…I have to go to a party tonight,” Curt told him.  “I don’t want to, but…it’s a public appearance.  The management company’s behind it, so I don’t really have a choice.”

            “Oh.”  Then there’d be no way to relieve his stress if Arthur’s day turned out as badly as the previous one…

            “Well, anyway…just…you’re probably gonna see a lot of stuff about me over the next few days.  In, uh, you know, the news.  Don’t pay any attention to any of it, okay?”

            “Why?  What’s—”  Arthur’s question was cut off the by loud rumble of the arriving subway train.  “Blast, that’s my train.  We’ll—we’ll talk later.”

            Arthur _wanted_ to kiss Curt goodbye, but with so many people around, he couldn’t possibly risk it.  Instead, he just patted him on the shoulder a couple of times, then dashed off into the train before it could leave again.

            The whole ride to work, he was haunted by the look Curt had given him from the platform as the train had sped off.  It was a mournful look, as though it physically hurt him that Arthur was leaving.  That notion—not to mention the fact that Curt had actually followed him all the way down to the platform!—was sure to sustain Arthur all through his tedious day at work, and keep him in hopeful spirits, even though he knew he’d have to go back to his own flat at the end of the day, instead of going back to Curt’s.

 

***

 

            Arthur was just getting ready to go home for the evening when Mary approached his desk.  “You aren’t planning on bailing, too, are you?” she asked suspiciously.

            “What?”

            “Third Friday of the month,” Mary reminded him.

            “Oh, I forgot,” Arthur admitted, with an uncomfortable smile.  Why his co-workers insisted on having a monthly drinking binge together was beyond him.  He usually did his best to get out of it, which everyone seemed to see as unforgivable.

            “But you _are_ coming,” Mary insisted.

            “I suppose I can,” Arthur said, trying not to sigh.  “My date fell through.”

            “Well, I guess we can have an odd man out,” Mary sighed, frowning.

            “I don’t understand.”

            “Oh, Lionel tried to ditch us.  Said he has a ‘hot date’ and didn’t want to waste it.”  Mary laughed wickedly.  It was almost a cackle.  “So we’re all going to meet up at the bar where he’s taking her for drinks.  My husband’s going to be there, and Murray’s wife.  You sure your girlfriend can’t make it?”

            Arthur nodded.  If Curt was free, he’d be halfway to Curt’s flat by now, not agreeing to go drinking with his dull co-workers.

            “Maybe you could call up an old girlfriend, then.  It won’t look good if _Lionel_ has a date and the best-looking guy in the office is stag.”

            “I’m not cheatin’, especially not for such a petty reason.”

            Mary shrugged.  “Maybe if his date really is hot, you could snatch her away from him.”

            “I just said—”

            “All right, all right.  You’re such a stiff-shirt sometimes,” Mary sighed.  “Get your things together.  We’ll all go together so no one gets lost.”

            Ordinarily, Arthur might think she was insulting his competence in navigating New York’s subway system, but under the circumstances he was quite certain she was accusing him of intending to escape.  Since he desperately _wanted_ to escape, it probably wasn’t fair to hold that against her.

            To Arthur’s delight, he found that Lionel had selected a British-style pub to have drinks with his ‘hot date.’  The best part of that was that he could hopefully have a real drink, instead of American beer.  He had hoped it might also improve the ambiance inside, but it was still painfully American.  Perhaps a bit of an unreasonable complaint, considering where he was.

            Mary’s husband, Lars, was waiting for them out front of the pub.  The story floating around the office said that Mary had gone on a trip to Europe after graduating from university, and had returned to New York with a Norwegian husband.  Everyone had thought it was just an immigration scam at the time, but they were still together more than ten years later and had two children, so even if it had started out that way, it had changed into something real.  They were quite the mismatched pair, though:  Mary was a decidedly average-looking woman, while Lars was absolutely bleeding _gorgeous_.  Not at Curt’s level, of course, but surprisingly close.  He was also one of the only men Arthur had met who was significantly taller than he was.

            Murray’s wife—slightly more attractive than Murray, but not by all that much—joined them before they were ready to head inside the pub, so they were all able to descend on Lionel’s table _en masse_.  Given that Lionel was a bit over fifty, had a significant paunch, and a nose reminiscent of W. C. Fields’, Arthur had expected his ‘hot date’ would be a divorcée in her late thirties, with the tired, worn look of a woman who had once been attractive.  So he was quite shocked to see a girl who looked like she might still be in university sitting with Lionel.  The girl was tarted up in a manner that made her look cheap and unpleasant; in a more natural—or at least classier—style, she would probably be quite beautiful.

            Lionel was unsurprisingly enraged at seeing so many of his co-workers join him, but he still agreed to move from their small booth to a large table that would accommodate them all.  After Lionel introduced them all to her, he introduced his date as Tiffany.

            “That’s Tiffani with an ‘i,’ of course!” the girl added instantly.  Then she giggled and started telling them about herself in vague and uninteresting words.

            The more she talked, the more disgusted Arthur became by her.  But she certainly explained why all of London had been so taken with Mandy.  They had expected that as an American woman, she would be vapid and uneducated, like this girl.  Then she had shocked them all by being witty, urbane and deep.  And back in the early ‘70s, she had still been quite the knock-out.  She probably still would be, if she took a bit better care of herself.

            When the waitress came to take their drink orders, she told them with considerable pride that the pub served over two dozen types of beer.  Everyone else at the table, therefore, was specifying brand and whether they wanted it on tap or from a bottle.  When it came to Arthur’s turn to order, he said “I’d like a Guinness, if you’ve got one.”  The waitress seemed more impressed that there was an actual Brit in their sham English pub than she was that he was ordering a real drink instead of that God-awful American piss.  Somehow, that seemed to fit the day he’d had.  It was truly one of those days where he should have stayed in bed.

            Once their drinks had arrived, the typical meandering conversation started.  Given that their work focussed so heavily on it, they tended to avoid talking about the election, and the conversation strayed back and forth between sports, movies and television programmes.  The longer they sat there talking over their drinks, the more Arthur became aware that Tiffani was staring at him, an uncomfortable situation that only got worse and worse as Arthur’s co-workers ordered round after round of drinks.

            After a somewhat explosive argument about some sitcom Arthur had never even heard of, Tiffani suddenly spoke up.  “So you work at the _Herald_ , too?” she asked.  “Do you cover the theatre?”

            “Theatre?” Arthur repeated.  “Why would I cover that?”

            “Oh, well, um…you know…”  Was she being shy, or had she come to some bizarre conclusion and thought it was the only natural conclusion anyone would come to?  All Arthur could think of was that either she could see he wasn’t interested in her and assumed that meant he had no interest in women at all, and therefore should be interested in the theatre—because straight people always seemed to think gay men were only interested in each other and being on stage—or she thought that the English were too fussy and high-minded to do anything other than write bitter theatrical reviews.  Either way, it was terribly offensive.

            “Don’t let his looks fool you,” Mary laughed.  “He’s not as young and innocent as you think.”

            “Not this again,” Arthur sighed.  “Please, let it die.”

            “Back when he first started working at the _Herald_ , this real son of a bitch from…what paper was that?” Mary asked, looking at Murray.

            “Who cares?” Murray replied, shaking his head.

            Mary sighed.  “Well, whoever he was, he kept giving Arthur a hard time and calling him a kid.  And I said to him, ‘He may just be a kid, but he’s going to give our paper that little touch of London class that’s going to put us on top!’  And he—”

            “I keep tellin’ ya, I’m not from London,” Arthur exclaimed, trying to nip the story in the bud.  There was still at least another ten minutes’ worth of excruciatingly embarrassing material there.  “I’m from Manchester.  You can’t get much further from London before you hit Scotland.”

            “Where it is doesn’t matter,” Mary laughed.  “It’s all about _class_.”

            “Trust me, Manchester’s got no reputation for bein’ classy,” Arthur sighed.  “Anything but, in fact.  Ask anyone who’s ever been at a Man United football match.”

            “Man, United?” Tiffani repeated, with a giggle.  “Sounds like a gay porno.”

            Arthur had no idea how to reply to that.  While there were, admittedly, some footballers he might not mind seeing have at each other in that manner, the idea would outrage both the footballers and their fans.

            “I’ve always thought it sounded more like a labour union,” Murray said.

            “For gay porn stars!” Mary exclaimed, with a roar of laughter.  She also started waving her empty beer glass to get the waitress’s attention.

            “I think you’ve had enough, honey,” Lars said, taking it away from her gently.

            “Surprised to hear you talking about football,” Lionel said, shaking his head.  “You always seem to zone out whenever I start talking about the Packers.”

            Murray immediately started a harangue about Lionel’s taste in ball teams, but Arthur couldn’t help laughing, which only made Lionel demand to know what was so funny.  “He’s talking about the sport you call ‘soccer,’” Lars explained.  “It is called ‘football’ in most of the rest of the world.”

            “So what do you call proper football, then?” Lionel countered.

            “We call it football,” Arthur chuckled.  “Your sport…I suppose if we talk about it at all, it’s as ‘American football,’ or perhaps as a pale imitation of rugby.”  He shrugged.  “Most of the rest of the world doesn’t pay much attention to the sport.  It is, after all, just thinly disguised homoeroticism.”

            Murray and Lionel loudly objected to that characterisation, though it made Mary and Tiffani both laugh.  Even Lars was chuckling.  But both American men were demanding an explanation.

            “I was quite shocked by it the first time I turned on the telly and saw a broadcast,” Arthur told them.  “All those shots of men bending over to display their arses at the camera, and then one of them comes up right behind another…I honestly thought they were both going to drop their trousers and have sex.  Thought someone was broadcastin’ pornography in the middle of the day as some sort of prank.”

            “Wow, if _that_ was how they played it, I’d actually watch it,” Mary said, nodding her head thoughtfully.

            “Yeah, me, too,” Tiffani agreed, “if the players weren’t so ugly.”

            “Well, their faces are hidden by those helmets,” Mary countered.

            “They’d probably take them off before having sex though,” Tiffani insisted.  Their conversation devolved from there—much to the horror and embarrassment of all the men, even Arthur—into a lengthy analysis of gay pornography.  The surprising part, to Arthur’s mind, was the fact that both women had apparently _watched_ porn involving men having sex with each other.  He wouldn’t have expected that of Mary.  Lars looked like _he_ hadn’t expected it, either.

            The conversation was finally, mercifully cut off when the waitress came back to see if they wanted something to eat.  Arthur tried to beg out of it, but no one was willing to let him leave early.

            After that, the evening descended into torture as Mary asked Arthur to tell them about the ‘girlfriend’ who had ditched him that night.  “What’s her name?”  “Have you slept with her yet?”  “Is it serious?”  “What’s she do for a living?”  “How’d you meet?”

            “I really don’t want to talk about this,” Arthur insisted repeatedly.  Part of him was tempted to answer her questions honestly.  After all that talking she had just done about men having sex with other men, how quickly would she turn on a man who actually _did_ have sex with other men?  If he answered that first question with ‘ _his_ name is Curt,’ how quickly would he become a pariah at the office?

            Honestly, it was more the certainty that he would end up unemployed that kept him quiet, rather than fear of his co-workers rejecting him.  He didn’t exactly care what they thought of him anyway.

            Unfortunately, Mary seemed to take Arthur’s evasive answer to mean that he didn’t care about his ‘girlfriend,’ and soon she was openly trying to convince him to take Tiffani away from Lionel.  Appallingly—but perhaps unsurprisingly—Tiffani was just as openly joining in.  The longer that went on, the more Lionel began to look like he was going to attack Arthur.

            Beginning to fear for his safety, Arthur jotted down a quick note on a piece of paper and passed it to the waitress when she brought the next round of drinks.  Thankfully, she did as he requested, and came back a few minutes later, telling him he had a telephone call.  After going over to the bar and pretending to talk on the phone for a minute or two, he came back to the table and told his co-workers that an emergency had come up and he had to leave.

            Then he got out of there before they had time to object.

            Between the stress of the end of the evening and the lengthy discussion of gay erotica earlier in the conversation, Arthur needed desperately to see Curt.  He tried calling, hoping that he would be back from whatever event he’d gone to, but there was no answer.  Miserably, Arthur turned on one of Curt’s records, and laid down in bed, replaying the previous night’s beautiful love-making over and over in his head.


	13. Chapter 13

            Arthur’s spirits suffered even further the very next day.  He was having breakfast in a café near his flat and the owners had their radio playing where the customers could hear it.  After the radio played one of Teresa Garcia’s songs, it switched to two disc jockeys discussing the song, and the singer.

            “You know, Tee held a big party last night,” the female DJ said, after she had finished analyzing the song’s place in Teresa’s overall oeuvre.

            “I heard things got pretty wild,” the male DJ laughed.

            “They sure did—a particular kind of Wild,” the woman replied.  The way she said it made Arthur’s stomach knot up.  He could practically _hear_ the capital ‘W’.  “Rumour has it that Curt Wild stayed all night, and then some.”

            “No, not my innocent little Tee!” the man moaned.

            “Well, _I_ don’t blame her.  Curt Wild’s pretty sexy.”

            “For a man old enough to be her father,” the male DJ chuckled.  “But say it ain’t so, Tee!  Say it ain’t so!  You can’t be settling for a has-been like Curt Wild!”

            A few weeks ago, Arthur would have been outraged that Curt was being called a ‘has-been.’  But now he was too busy fighting nausea at the thought that he had been so suddenly and unceremoniously dumped for someone so generic.  Worse still, for someone Curt claimed to think of as a little child!

            Had Curt done this because he was angry at Arthur for going off to work instead of staying with him?  He wouldn’t have followed Arthur all the way to the subway station if he hadn’t hoped to convince Arthur to change his mind…

            Thinking about that conversation, Arthur remembered that Curt had mentioned something about how he’d be in the news soon, but surely he wasn’t talking about something like this.  Who _planned_ to move from friendship to sex?  Especially in such an easily noticed and gossiped about manner.  Whatever Curt had been talking about had to be something else.  He was probably expecting there to be rumours that he was going to give up singing, or that he would be leaving the country, or something like that.

            As he went through the day, Arthur tried to convince himself that maybe this _was_ what Curt had been talking about.  That maybe he _had_ planned to sleep with Teresa—though Arthur couldn’t imagine why he would want to either plan or commit such an act—and that he’d been worried about how the press would treat it.  Maybe Teresa wanted to have a baby, and she wanted Curt to be the father.  Maybe Curt had just stayed there overnight, and _hadn’t_ had sex with her.

            Or maybe he was just sick of Arthur and this was how he showed it.

            No matter how many times he tried to come up with other explanations, that was the one he came back to.  After all, why would Curt want to date him?  He was dull, and actually relatively inexperienced, all things considered, so the sex couldn’t really be very good for Curt.  And on top of all Arthur’s innate flaws, there was the fact that if they were perceived to be a couple, they would be hated, reviled and tormented by all those around them.

            Of course Curt wanted to be rid of him.  Who wouldn’t want to be rid of him?

            But it still hurt that he’d chosen a method like this to do it.  Why hadn’t he at least said something to Arthur’s face?  Then again, maybe Curt had planned a proper break-up, but had been afraid to go through with it when he saw what a state Arthur was in Thursday night.  Sadly, that seemed very likely.  After all, who wouldn’t get a little panicky at seeing a grown man cry?

            On the subway home, Arthur listened to the idle chatter of the other passengers.  Most of them were talking about their own lives, or their friends and family, but a few were discussing politics, sports or movies.  Not one of them was talking about Curt, regardless of whether or not he had become involved with Teresa Garcia.  However, all that proved was that if it had really happened, it either wasn’t yet well-known, or no one else cared.  The only way to be sure would be to call Curt and ask him directly, so Arthur resolved to do just that.

            Making a resolution and acting on that resolution, however, are very different things, and Arthur spent at least ten minutes just sitting in his flat, staring at the telephone, trying to work up the courage to pick up the receiver and dial Curt’s number.  While he was sitting there, the phone actually rang.  Arthur answered it eagerly, praying it was Curt on the other end.

            “Hey, Arthur, did you break up with your dreamboat already?” Brad’s voice asked.  “According to the celebrity gossip on TV, he’s suddenly sleeping with Tee?”

            Arthur shut his eyes.  What was he supposed to say?  “I…I’m not altogether certain,” he finally admitted, trying not to sound too torn up.  “Everything was fine Thursday night…”

            “That was the last time you talked to him?”

            “Friday morning.  But it seemed…he didn’t seem to want to break up…”  Or maybe he did.  It was hard to be sure now.

            “You okay?”

            “Yeah…”  No point in admitting otherwise.

            “You don’t _sound_ okay,” Brad said, with a deep sigh.  “I won’t press you, but if you need a shoulder to cry on, mine’s open, okay?”

            “Thanks, Brad.  But I’ll be fine.”

            Clearly, Brad didn’t think there was any reason Curt would stay with him.  And Brad knew better than anyone else in New York whether it was worth a man’s time to date Arthur.  If Brad didn’t think Curt would choose him over Teresa Garcia, why should Arthur think any differently?

            There wasn’t any point in stressing out over the phone call.  It was going to be short and predictable.  Curt would answer, say that Arthur was an idiot not to have taken the hint, and hang up on him, walking out of his life forever.  And that was probably how it was supposed to be.

            With no further reason to wonder about how the call was going to go, it was much easier to work up the strength to make the call.  But Curt didn’t answer.  The phone rang and rang, but it was never answered.  Eventually, Arthur accepted defeat, and hung up.  Clearly, Curt either wasn’t home, or didn’t want to be disturbed.

            Trying to distract himself, Arthur decided to watch television and work on his new assignment, if he could stomach it.  It was supposed to be a piece praising President Reynolds’ foreign policy, despite that there really wasn’t anything praiseworthy about it.  It was foolishly antagonistic towards the USSR and the countries under its sway, and staggeringly conceited about America’s importance in the world as a whole.  Emblematic, really, of Reynolds’ entire administration.

            Arthur continued working on the story until the ten o’clock news came on.  He hoped the news might contain some hopeful development in the election, but of course no such luck.  When the entertainment news section came on, he decided to turn the television set off before anything could make his state worse, but he wasn’t fast enough.

            “New Yorkers were stunned tonight when the usually shy Teresa Garcia showed up at a trendy nightclub with ‘70s legend Curt Wild,” the newsreader said.  Silent footage began to play of Curt and Teresa sitting at a table together in the nightclub, talking quietly.  Every so often, Curt leaned in to whisper in her ear, making Teresa seem to giggle.  “Though the pair claimed that they’re only friends, they spent the whole evening together, holding hands.  Additionally, rumour has it that Wild spent the night at Garcia’s home following her party yesterday.  Both singers are represented by Aura Management, which refused to release a statement on their behalf.  Acquaintances of both parties have commented that it is unlike either singer to falsify a romantic relationship.  However, that has not prevented speculation that this might be a stunt to increase ticket sales for _He Done Her Wrong_ , in which both singers appear.  The picture’s box office results have, so far, been lacklustre.”  The footage changed to a ten year old shot of Curt with his arm around Brian.  “Curt Wild is best known for his intimate relationship with the even more legendary singer, Brian Slade, an affair that ended Slade’s career, and greatly damaged Wild’s.”  The television set resumed showing the bland newsreader.  “Perhaps this wholesome romance with Teresa Garcia will finally help to repair the damage caused by that relationship, as Curt Wild provides the world with proof that he understands what a mistake it was to be seduced by the androgynous English singer.”  The newsreader shuffled his papers, looking at the camera with an expression he probably thought was dramatic.  “For the sake of America’s reputation, we surely all hope so.”

            Enraged, Arthur shut the television off.

            No matter what was really going on with Teresa Garcia, there was no way Curt looked on what had passed between him and Brian as a mistake.  They had really been in love, and it had been beautiful.  No matter what anyone said, no one who knew the truth could ever deny that.

            But that didn’t change that footage from the nightclub.  Curt had looked genuinely romantic with her.  And he wasn’t the type to fake that.

            Miserably, Arthur gave up and went to bed, where he finally let go of what little dignity he had left, and cried himself to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we enter the "Arthur acts like an idiot" section of the plot...
> 
> ...sorry about that. (I promise, it's not a long section!)


	14. Chapter 14

            Arthur spent most of Sunday trying to tell himself that the news had been right about one thing, and that whatever Curt was doing with Teresa, it was just to publicise their movie.  It was hard to do so convincingly, however, as it felt like he couldn’t turn on the television without seeing something about their alleged affair.  Logically, he knew that had to mean that someone—either the management company or the movie studio—had hired a publicist to ensure that people were constantly being reminded that they were being seen being affectionate in public, but…that had been the case with Curt and Brian, too, and that had been very real.  How was Arthur to tell the difference?

            He tried to call Curt several times Sunday, but the phone was never answered.

            Monday morning just made everything worse.  On his way past a newsstand, Arthur spotted a tabloid that insisted Curt and Teresa were secretly engaged.  Despite himself, Arthur bought the thing, hiding it in his satchel so no one at work would see he had bought their sleazy competition.  He didn’t dare try to read it until he was safely back in his flat, however.

            Once Arthur started reading the tabloid’s article, it was hard to stop his hands from shaking.  Though it had no proof of an engagement, it offered a number of quotes—what it claimed were quotes, at any rate—from Curt and Teresa, talking about their love for each other.  Arthur didn’t know whether the ones from Teresa sounded like something she would say or not, but the ones from Curt…they were genuine.  They had to be genuine.  That had that genuine Curt Wild rhythm, the cadence and language that made his speech so unique.

            Was it, then?  Curt had dumped him for that woman?

            Arthur’s mind couldn’t help flying back to Thursday night, what Curt had said between what had seemed like deep, passionate, heartfelt kisses.  “Tell me how you want me to make you happy,” he had said, his words somewhere between a whisper and a moan.  “I’ll do anything you want, baby.”  When Arthur had said that he wasn’t picky, and Curt could do whatever he wanted, Curt had replied “All I want is to take away your pain and give you pleasure to take its place.  If I can’t make my beautiful boyfriend happy, then what good am I?”

            How could he have let go of that so bloody fast?  How could he just turn around and…

            Arthur wasn’t sure if he was more hurt or angry, suddenly.  Something had snapped inside him; it felt more like a betrayal than anything else now.  He didn’t know how to deal with heartbreak, but he knew how to deal with betrayal.

            Picking up the phone, Arthur tried to call Curt one more time.  To give him a chance to explain his actions.

            This time, the line was busy.

            So Curt was finally at home?

            Excellent.  This kind of thing was better done in person anyway.

            Arthur folded the tabloid back up, and stuck it in his satchel, then headed for the subway station.  It was the tail end of rush hour, so the trains were still running at their maximum frequency.  It wouldn’t take _too_ long to get to Curt’s flat.  Hopefully he would still be there when Arthur arrived.

            Due to the hour at which he arrived, it was easy to find someone else going into Curt’s building, and follow them inside.  Then he went straight up to Curt’s flat, and rang the bell.  If Curt had already left, then Arthur was just going to sit in the hallway and wait for him, even if he had to wait all night.

            He didn’t have to.  The door was soon opened.  Curt’s expression was impossible to read:  it might have been anger, or worry, or even relief.  Or maybe he was just drunk.  Whatever he was thinking, he let Arthur in without a word, and quickly shut the door behind him.

            “I want to know what the bloody hell is going on!” Arthur told him, without even waiting for Curt to ask what he was doing there.  He produced the tabloid and shoved it against Curt’s chest.  “Is this…what…how…how could you _do_ this to me?  I thought—I thought you were—I thought we were—”

            “It’s just a fucking publicity stunt!” Curt shouted, cutting him off.  “C’mon, Arthur, I _told_ you not to pay any attention to what the news said about me.”

            “You didn’t say you were plannin’ to fuck that girl!” Arthur countered, feeling tears welling up in his eyes.  “How could you _do_ that?”

            “Arthur, her house has three bedrooms.  I never laid a finger on her,” Curt sighed.  “Seriously, Tee’s like a little sister to me.  The idea of fucking her is disgusting.”

            “But why…why…”

            “The management company’s been planning this ever since they had to re-write the movie script and make me play that part,” Curt told him, moving closer and putting his hands on Arthur’s shoulders, as if he was afraid of a full embrace.  “They were scared the actor I replaced might tell people the real reason Tee couldn’t film the love scene with him.”

            “What reason?” Arthur asked suspiciously.  If she and Curt had such a familial relationship, she should have been _more_ uncomfortable filming a love scene with him, not less.

            “She grew up in LA as a pretty Mexican girl who didn’t like boys,” Curt said, shaking his head.  “You can imagine what kinds of things she had to suffer through.  After that, how could she let a strange man touch her half-naked body?  But she knows me, and she knows I’d never do that to her, so she wasn’t as scared.”

            “Wait, she doesn’t like—you mean she’s a lesbian?”

            Curt nodded.  "You can guess what her fans would do if they find out.  Her manager’s convinced that they’ll go from adoring her to burning her in effigy.  So he decided to have her get married to make it look like she likes men.  And my career needed the attention, so…I just sorta got shoved into it.”  He shook his head sadly.  “I’ve been begging them to call it off since you showed up, but they’ve had this planned out for months, and they won’t listen to me.”

            “I…I…”  How was Arthur supposed to process all of that?  It was just too much to take in all at once.

            Curt pulled him closer, and kissed him gently.  “I kept putting off explaining it to you, because I kept hoping I could talk them out of it.  By the time I knew I couldn’t…you were running off to work.”

            “But…”

            Curt sighed.  “Okay, how about I prove it to you?”

            “Prove what?”

            “That I’m serious.”

            “How…how can you prove that?”

            Curt grinned, then kissed him, wrapping his arms around Arthur’s body.  The fingers of one hand began to curl through Arthur’s short hair, while the other hand moved down to caress his backside.  They kept kissing until Arthur relaxed enough to slide his arms around Curt in return.

            Then, just like that, Curt pulled out of the kiss.

            “Wh-what…?”

            Curt chuckled, and started undressing Arthur, kissing his way down his bare chest, then knelt in front of him, and gently unfastened his trousers, pushing them and his pants all the way down to his ankles.  Even before Arthur could process what was happening, Curt started kissing and caressing his erection, even running his tongue across the tip.

            “You—you don’t have to—!”  Arthur’s words were cut off in a gasp of pleasure as Curt started sliding his lips around it.  He could only moan in pleasure as Curt sucked on him.

            Even in the past, when the situation was so much simpler, Arthur had never quite known what to do with his hands while getting a blowjob.  Holding the back of his partner’s head—as so many of his partners had done with his head—never felt quite right to him, but it felt too good for his hands to just hang limp at his side.  In consequence, they jerked about uncertainly, sometimes grabbing at his own face or arms, as if he subconsciously wanted to calm himself down, and sometimes caressing the side of Curt’s head, or tangling his fingers in Curt’s unkempt hair.

            Only as he was about to climax did Arthur realize that there was something really _wrong_ with the situation.  He asked Curt to stop, and tried to pull out, but Curt wasn’t listening, and grabbed his arse, pulling Arthur so tightly towards him that there was no chance of pulling out.  Arthur ended up ejaculating into Curt’s mouth with a cry of dismayed pleasure.

            “But…what if I’m infected…?” Arthur asked uneasily, as Curt got to his feet again.

            “I’m more likely to be infected than you are,” Curt chuckled, before leaning in to kiss him.  Arthur could taste his own semen in Curt’s mouth, a strange sensation he had only rarely experienced in the past.  “Now, tell me the truth:  do you believe me when I tell you that I’m serious about you?”

            Arthur nodded, his face covered with a silly, giddy smile.  “I love you, Curt,” he whispered, before kissing him with all the passion he could produce in the aftermath of his orgasm.  “Shall I return the favour now?”

            “No, that’s not what I want right now,” Curt insisted.  “C’mon, let’s go to the bedroom.”

            “Uh…okay…but what is it you want to do?”

            Curt laughed.  “I wanna fuck that sweet ass of yours, of course!”

            “But then I’ll…I’ll get to come twice…” Arthur pointed out, even as he let Curt lead him towards the bedroom.

            “Fine by me,” Curt assured him.  “Besides, I think I owe you at least that much.”

            Arthur laughed, feeling gentle fingers of relief spreading through his body.  “Oh God, I love you,” he said, so quietly that Curt didn’t even seem to hear him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sigh* The tabloid quotes had that had that genuine Curt Wild rhythm, the cadence and language that made his speech so unique...even though none of *my* Curt dialog has same.... :(


	15. Chapter 15

            The sound of a door slamming in the hallway woke Curt out of a relatively deep sleep.  Those dipshits down the hall again.  They were always slamming doors and running through the hall at four in the morning.

            He lifted his head a little to peer over Arthur’s shoulder at the clock on the bedside table.  It was about half an hour to midnight.  Not much fun, but…

            “Wake up,” Curt said, setting a hand on Arthur’s arm.

            Arthur stirred slightly, pressing himself backwards against Curt’s body.  “You want more?” he mumbled in that sweetly giddy tone of his.

            “Yeah, but that’s not it,” Curt sighed.  “C’mon, wake up.”

            “I’m ‘wake,” Arthur insisted.  His lack of enunciation proved otherwise.

            “Arthur, you have to go home now,” Curt said firmly.  What point was there in sugar-coating it?

            That did the job.  Arthur rolled over and looked at him with a wounded expression.  “Now?  Why?”

            “What if someone saw you come in here?” Curt asked.  “And then if you don’t leave until tomorrow morning?  You know the press hasn’t forgotten about me and Brian.  If you stay the night here, they’ll figure out what happened.  And then they’ll start saying the engagement is being faked to hide _my_ sexuality instead of Tee’s.”

            “Engagement?” Arthur repeated.  “You’re not actually plannin’ to _marry_ her, are you?”

            “Depends who you ask.  I don’t want to, and Tee doesn’t want to, but our managers think that’s the thing to do.  There’s an official statement being released tomorrow saying that we’re engaged.”  Curt frowned.  “What’s actually gonna happen is out of our hands.  If everyone loses interest, we can just stage a break-up before the wedding.  Happens to lots of people, even among stars.  But if the press keep harping on it, we might get forced into actually getting married for a year or two.”

            Arthur’s lower lip started to tremble.  “What about…what about _us_?  Do I—are you just goin’ to cast me aside after—”

            Curt cut him off with a kiss.  “Don’t be stupid,” he said after their lips parted again.  “We just have to be careful no one sees anything.  I mean, we were having to do that anyway, right?  It’s just that now there’s gonna be media attention on me for a while, so you can’t stay the night until things calm down.”

            Arthur nodded, but he still looked like he was going to start crying.  Shit.  If he was so fragile as an adult, what was he like as a kid?  Maybe Jack had been right to insist that taking him with them would only end up hurting the boy.

            Curt kissed him again to try and reassure him a little.  “I’ll call you when I can, okay?”

            “When will we actually be able to see each other, though?”

            “I don’t know, exactly.  It’s all pretty touchy right now,” Curt admitted.  “Just…once things calm down, it should be a lot easier.  The media like to jump on anything that’s new.”

            “You do realize I’m part of ‘the media,’ right?” Arthur asked, with a bit of a chuckle.

            “Yeah, but you’re a different part.”  After a moment’s thought, Curt grinned.  “Besides, if _you_ wanna jump on me, I’m not gonna be complaining.”

            Arthur laughed.  “Sounds good to me,” he agreed, kissing Curt again.  “I just…”

            Curt sighed.  Why the fuck was he making this so goddamned difficult?  “Arthur, do any of the people you work with know you like to fuck men?”

            Arthur turned a deep crimson.  On him, it was a good look.  “What—what’s that got to do with anything!?”

            “Do they?”

            He shook his head.  “N-no, I…I’ve managed to keep it quiet…”

            “So if you can keep that a secret, you can keep a lid on this, too.”  Curt cradled the side of Arthur’s face with one hand.  “Just act like you’ve never heard of me, like you don’t care what I do.  No one’ll notice anything.  Most people don’t notice shit.”

            “Until they step in it.”

            “I didn’t mean actual shit,” Curt sighed.

            “Neither did I.”

            Curt really wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean.  It sounded deep and all, but what did it mean?  And was he going to sound like a moron if he asked?  “Really, you need to go,” he said.  Better to change the subject than risk admitting his own ignorance.  “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

            Arthur nodded miserably, then climbed out of bed and started looking around at the floor.  “Oh, right, they’re still in the front hall,” he muttered to himself, then went padding off to the other room, where Curt had stripped him last night.

            Curt got out of bed and followed.  Never a bad moment to look at that sexy body, right?  Especially since he wasn’t going to have much access to it for the next few weeks.

            “You know, one of the television newsreaders was already sayin’ that it was a stunt to boost ticket sales for your movie,” Arthur told him.

            “Then what were you so worked up about?”

            Arthur looked away from Curt’s face, suddenly paying all too much attention to zipping up his fly.  “They showed footage of you two together…and it looked really…convincing…and then that tabloid…”

            Curt sighed.  “Yeah, well, despite how the movie makes it look, I _can_ actually act.”

            “I wouldn’t know how the movie makes it look,” Arthur countered.  “Every time we were goin’ to the cinema, you picked something else.”

            “Because it’s fucking embarrassing!  I mean, the movie would be crap even if I _didn’t_ act like an even bigger asshole than I actually am and then disappear until it’s time to be shot to death.”

            “You’re not an arsehole, and don’t talk about getting shot!”  Arthur just looked at him with big, worried eyes for a moment or two, then shook his head, like he thought he could shake away how ridiculously sensitive he was being.  “I just wanted to…look, if people are already suspicious, gettin’ engaged won’t make them any less suspicious.  It’ll just make everything look _more_ fake.”

            Curt shrugged.  “It’s not in _my_ hands.  I’d have put a stop to the whole thing, remember?  But if I do anything to torpedo it, my career’s gonna be deader than dirt.  So we just have to lay low until everyone loses interest.”

            Arthur sighed heavily as he shrugged into his drab knit shirt.  “I guess it wouldn’t bother me so much if we’d had more time together first,” he said.

            “Or it might seem even worse.”  Curt was on the fence about which way would be worse.  He knew this way sucked, but the other…well, it’d definitely suck, too.  The whole fucking thing sucked.

            Even now that he was finished getting dressed, Arthur kept puttering around, trying to argue, trying to find some excuse to stay.  It was cute at first, but it was steadily getting more and more obnoxious.  Eventually, Curt just had to put his foot down and tell him to get out.  He tried to smile and make it look like a joke, but Arthur still looked pretty hurt.

            But it’s not like it was Curt’s fault!  If he’d had any say in the matter, he’d never have been doing all this shit!  It was just…how was he supposed to have a career if he wouldn’t do what his manager told him to?  Supposedly she and the company knew best about marketing a singer.  And if he pissed them off, they’d see to it that no one else would ever handle him.  And he couldn’t very well arrange all that shit himself.  He wouldn’t have any idea how to contact a record label, and even if he could, he’d just get screwed over.  Not to mention he’d never be able to schedule a whole tour…

            The more he thought about it, the more pissed off he got.  Pissed and stressed.

            So Curt grabbed a beer out of the fridge, turned on the television and lit up a cigarette.  No matter what kind of announcement was going out, he wasn’t gonna need to be coherent.  Tee could do all that talking.  Fuck, she usually did anyway.  Because she didn’t like to swear in public anymore, and she didn’t like letting anyone else swear in public either.  How had that cute little tomboy turned into such a girly-girl?  Watching people change as they grew up was depressing.

            Being old enough to see a little kid become an adult and a star in her own right was _also_ depressing.  Reminded him that he didn’t really have that many years left before he would suddenly be 40.

            Admittedly, there were a lot of times in his life when he hadn’t thought he’d ever live to see 40, but…still depressing.

            Curt turned the TV back off—nothing on anyway—and picked up his guitar.  The neighbors would probably call the cops if he used the amp at this time of night.  If anyone complained about it without, then fuck ‘em.

            He sat down again, with the guitar on his lap and started idly running his fingers across the strings as he looked around for a pick.  In this mood, he should be able to write a good depressing song.  He didn’t have very many depressing songs on his albums, so it’d be a nice change of pace.

            And this was a world that prompted depressing songs, after all.


	16. Chapter 16

            The management company must have sent out its press release at noon, because the rumours began to trickle through the _Herald_ office as people returned from their lunch breaks.  Even though he now knew that Curt wasn’t _actually_ involved with Teresa, Arthur still felt a stabbing pain at every word from his co-workers.  Naturally, since he didn’t want to hear this particular gossip, they all felt the need to talk about it at the water cooler, right behind his chair, instead of in the break room, the way they always did on the rare occasions when he _was_ interested in their gossip.

            “I just don’t get why Tee would settle for a man old enough to be her father,” Murray was saying for at least the fifth time.  “If I’d known she liked older men, I’d have—”

            “What?  Divorced your wife in the hopes she’d be interested?”  So Mary was his current victim at the water cooler.  At least she wasn’t quite agreeing with him.  “Face it, you’re no prime catch, honey.  I don’t even see how you got a wife in the first place.”

            “You can’t say you think that guy is a ‘prime catch’!?” Murray exclaimed, sounding horrified.

            “Better than _you_ ,” Mary laughed.  “If he’d just cut his hair, he’d at least be a little bit good-looking.  For a washed-up white guy.”

            As Murray continued to insist that ‘Tee’ was ‘settling’ in getting involved with Curt, Arthur had to exert every ounce of his mental and physical strength not to start screaming at them.  To correct all their horrendous mistakes of judgment.  If the relationship was real, Curt would be the one who was ‘settling’ for a lesser partner.  Curt was gorgeous no matter what, and the long hair looked great on him.  And he wasn’t ‘washed-up’ in the slightest!

            Arthur was about at the end of his rope when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder.  “Hey, you settle this for us,” Murray said.  “You agree with me that Tee could do better than Curt Wild, right?”

            “I don’t, actually,” Arthur told him, doing his best to keep his voice level.  “He spent two years in a passionate affair with Brian Slade.  How could he be contented with a paltry girl singer after that?”  Though that, of course, was proof that Arthur shouldn’t get his hopes too high for a long-term relationship:  how could Curt be contented with someone as dull as Arthur after he’d experienced someone like Brian at his height?  “The whole thing stinks of a publicity stunt anyway.”

            He had hoped the notion of it being sheerly for publicity would quiet them down—or at least make them go away and leave him in peace—but it only made them argue more loudly.  Worse still, Lionel came over and joined Murray’s side of the argument, and Lou’s secretary joined Mary’s, and eventually it felt like half the office was standing right behind Arthur, driving daggers through his back with their words.

            Eventually, he got up and left his desk, heading into the empty break room to write out his article by hand.  Lou seemed more than a little surprised to be getting a hand-written rough draft, but he didn’t complain about anything except that Arthur had used more proper spellings than usual.  It was somehow easier to remember to use the American versions on the computer than when writing by hand.  With a few minor changes, the article would be acceptable, so all he had to do was type it up.  Thankfully, the water cooler was deserted again by that point, so he was able to do so quickly enough to be able to leave work on time, for a change.

            When he got home, Arthur tried calling Curt, but of course there was no answer.  He was probably out with his fake fiancée somewhere, making a public spectacle of himself.  It might have been selfish to be jealous about it, but Arthur couldn’t help it.  He had a limited amount of time before Curt got tired of him, after all, and yet he was losing some of that time to that girl, even though Curt wasn’t _actually_ involved with her.  How could he not feel resentful of her?

            Maybe it was because he was so annoyed at the whole situation that Arthur decided to do something that would probably make Curt angry if he found out:  he decided to go see _He Done Her Wrong_.  It was embarrassing to buy the ticket, but the fellow selling him the ticket didn’t seem to think there was anything odd about it.  In fact, considering it was a weeknight, there were actually a surprising number of other patrons in the theatre.

            The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the movie proved Curt’s point amply:  anyone who only saw him in that film would definitely think he couldn’t act.  His performance of the song was magnificent, naturally, but his reaction when Teresa’s character, Meche, went looking for him after the show was highly unnatural.  Admittedly, Arthur knew better than anyone else in the audience—he hoped!—just how Curt _really_ reacted to a fan he found sexually desirable, but even those unfamiliar with Curt’s ways would surely find the performance unconvincing.  And the sex scene was so laughable that Arthur had trouble keeping silent through it.  When the script called for Curt’s character to run his hands across Meche’s breasts, it was easy to see that there was nearly an inch of empty air between Curt’s palms and Teresa’s skin.  And the kisses were painful to watch:  they were both wincing, like children forced to eat a particularly bitter vegetable.

            Following the sex scene, Meche begged to become one of his back-up singers, singing a bit of one of his songs to prove her talent.  Curt’s character mocked her abilities, and told her to go to hell—in itself an amusing line, since Curt would never phrase it so mildly unless it was affectionate teasing—causing Meche to vow revenge.  The bulk of the picture that followed was an entirely different movie, with Meche proving her abilities over and over again in her rise to stardom; it was light and cheerful despite the hardships Meche faced.  Curt’s character wasn’t even mentioned again until Meche hit it big.  Then the last fifteen minutes were a grindhouse-style revenge picture, with surprising amounts of violence that came quite literally out of nowhere.

            Arthur was ashamed of his behaviour during the movie’s final confrontation.  He had meant to simply watch it.  After all, he’d seen Brian Slade ‘shot down’ right in front of his eyes, in person, and he had believed for months that it had been real.  How much harder could it be to watch Curt being ‘shot’ in a movie that he knew for a fact was fictional?  Yes, he was in love with Curt and he had only fancied Brian, but that shouldn’t have mattered.  And yet, despite his intentions, as soon as Meche aimed her gun at Curt’s character, Arthur winced away, and didn’t look at the screen again until he was quite positive the scene had changed.

            When he got back to his flat after the movie, Arthur tried calling Curt, but again got no answer.  Depressed, he looked through his stack of records until he found an album with some of Curt’s live performances on it, then put that on and turned the volume up as high as he felt he could without disturbing the neighbours.


	17. Chapter 17

            “The President is out making campaign speeches for the primaries today,” Lou told him, “and we’ll have the transcripts of his speeches coming in over the wire.  I want you to write up some coverage of the speeches.”

            “How will I know how they’re received?” Arthur asked.  That could make or break the story, after all.  If he said a speech was badly received when it went well…

            “Unless you’re told otherwise, assume it went well.  Reynolds is popular, and most of the people listening to him are his supporters anyway.  Until the wires come in, work up some background information.”

            “I’ll get on it.”

            That was the one serious problem with Arthur’s job.  The most important journalists covered politics.  But American politics just at present didn’t agree with Arthur.  Not that things at home were much better—Margaret Thatcher was politically of the same mind as Martin Reynolds on nearly every subject—but somehow knowing that this was all going on in a country he had _chosen_ to live in made it all the worse.

            He tried to remind himself, as he worked, that choosing to live in this country had had the supreme benefit of letting him be with Curt again.  But if they couldn’t actually be together, that wasn’t going to feel like much of a benefit.

            To prepare for the transcripts of the speeches, Arthur had worked up a list of Reynolds’ major campaign issues—reducing taxes, increasing military spending, cracking down on illegal immigration—and a bit of background information on his major speechwriters, just in case the speech didn’t give him much else to write about.  Then he prepared a list of the positions of his major opponents in the Republican party—at this point the Governor of California was already the only serious contender left, if a retired actor could be considered a serious political candidate for such a high office—and even a run-down on the major positions of the most important Democratic candidates.  If this speech was filled with as much rote repetition as the last few of Reynolds’ speeches, he would need all that information just to fill in even a very small article.

            It turned out he didn’t need any of it.

            The wire came through right before the lunch hour, so Arthur got take-out, planning to eat while he read the speech.  By the time he was halfway through reading, he had to stop eating, for fear of choking in his rage.  Instead of the usual campaign promises, the theme of the speech was what was ‘wrong’ with America.

            “You don’t have to look far to see the signs of corruption and decadence trying to creep into our pure America!” the speech started.  “Pick up the newspaper—any newspaper—and look at the headlines!  Even in the entertainment section, vice is everywhere.  Look at this one here.  Can you see it, my friends?  Eagerly touting the engagement of a couple of celebrities.  That should be pure and harmless, shouldn’t it?  But look closer!  There’s nothing pure or harmless here!  It’s a fraud being performed on the American people, and on the American government!  Our people, our government!  They’re trying to deceive us, as their kinds try to deceive us every day.  He’s a faggot, and she’s an illegal Mexican immigrant, trying to gain American citizenship by marrying a sodomite!  I tell you, my friends, this newspaper is the pillar of salt as the liberals try to send us all to Sodom and Gomorrah!”

            A less involved journalist would probably have pointed out that Reynolds was trying to distract the people from the fact that despite the increased power and armament of the police under his ‘tough on crime’ policies, violent crime was at a record high, or that his foreign policy was both bankrupting the country and pushing it ever closer to nuclear war.  Or pointed out that his Biblical metaphor was backwards and broken.  Scores of such articles were likely being written even as the transcript of the speech fell out of Arthur’s trembling hands.

            He wrote like a man possessed.  Tearing the speech and Reynolds’ policies to shreds.  Detailing all of Reynolds’ acts of persecution against homosexuals. The time that Reynolds, as a District Attorney in Key West, nearly sent an innocent gay couple to the electric chair, accused of kidnapping and murdering a missing boy; even after the boy turned up safe and unharmed and in the hands of people unaffiliated with the couple, Reynolds fought not to have the sentence overturned, insisting that they were still a threat to society and should be safely locked away where they couldn’t infect anyone else with their perverted ways.  The laws he tried to have passed in the Florida State Legislature that would have made even the mildest public display of affection between two men a crime punishable by five to ten years in a state penitentiary.  The clause, hidden in a thankfully defeated bill he had introduced to Congress, that would have made all homosexuals officially considered ‘threats to national security,’ subject to perpetual observation by police and NSA operatives.

            Arthur didn’t stop there.  He also exposed every one of Reynolds’ acts of racism towards Hispanic people.  The time Reynolds had referred to the Mexican ambassador as ‘Pancho Villa’ after that ambassador had expressed his government’s dissatisfaction with the current trade agreements.  The racist epithets he had routinely used to refer to Mexican and Cuban immigrants while he was still in the Florida State Legislature.  The anti-immigration policies he had proposed to Congress over the last two years that would cut off all immigration from Central and South America, without limiting immigration from Europe or Asia.

            To close out the article, Arthur pulled photos from the society pages from the late ‘70s, showing Curt with a few of the many girlfriends he had had over the years, and borrowed Murray’s computer—he was the only one with a modem in the office—to connect to a California database and find the proof that Teresa Garcia had indeed been born in Los Angeles.  Not only were the accusations against the engagement emblematic of Reynolds’ personal hatreds, they were entirely unfounded.  Mostly unfounded.

            Arthur turned in the rough copy of the article before three o’clock, and stood watching as Lou read it over.  The old man shook his head as he lowered the paper.  “Brilliant work, Arthur,” he said.  “Really, it’s one of the best pieces I’ve seen in years.  But if we print it, Theo will definitely fire at least one of us, if not both of us.”

            “I’m willin’ to lose my job if I have to,” Arthur insisted.  “It’s bound to happen sooner or later anyhow.  Just tell him you didn’t see it before it went to layout.”

            Lou looked sad as he nodded his head.  “If you’re that determined, I won’t stop you,” he said, handing the rough back.  “Take it down to layout after I leave the office.  And sprinkle a few British spellings back in, so it’ll be more convincing.”

            Arthur smiled widely.  “Thanks.”

            “But think about what you’re doing first,” Lou said, in a pleading tone.  “If Theo fires you over this story, you won’t be able to get a job at another paper afterwards.  He’ll see to that.”

            “I’ll keep it in mind.”


	18. Chapter 18

            Arthur hadn’t had any second thoughts about the article until about midnight, when it was far too late.  Sacrificing his job for the sake of his integrity was the kind of thing he used to think himself capable of—the kind of thing Curt would do for his musical career—but it was also the sort of vain gesture he had forced himself to grow out of in the last ten years.  Having a roof over his head and food on his table had become more important than his integrity, and it was even more expensive trying to live in New York City than it was in London.  The fact that he had basically _asked_ to be fired was bad enough, but that he had done so in defence of his lover’s _false engagement_?  What in the world had he been thinking?

            There was always the chance that someone in layout had nixed the story, perhaps on orders from Theodore Kaufmann, so part of Arthur was hopeful that when he picked up that morning’s copy of the _Herald_ , he wouldn’t find his article in it.  And yet there it was, taking up a full third of the front page.

            Still, there was at least a small chance he wouldn’t be fired over it.  He hadn’t just sprinkled in a _few_ proper spellings:  he had gone back and changed every spelling to be correct, so it was possible that Kaufmann would think it had come in over the wire from a Canadian or English paper.  Unless he remembered Arthur’s name.

            By mid-morning, Arthur found that he had somehow obtained a near-celebrity status among his co-workers.  They kept stopping by his desk to congratulate him on the story.  Either none of them liked Reynolds as much as they usually seemed to, or they were just impressed he had shown the courage to speak out against such a powerful administration.  Or maybe they were just fond of the idea of Curt marrying that woman.

            Whatever their reason was, he didn’t like the attention, and kept finding excuses to go hide in the archives.  As midday approached, Arthur left the archives again, hoping that everyone else would have already left on their lunch breaks.  No such luck:  he was cornered by Lionel almost immediately.

            “I hear you were really wearing your big boy pants when you turned in that latest story,” he said.

            Even as Arthur wondered if there was any point asking someone to interpret that nonsense into English, he heard Mary start laughing.  “You haven’t seen it?” she asked, walking up to Lionel.  “Our kid’s one of the grown-ups now!”

            _“Our kid’s one of them pansy rockers!”_

            “’Oo d’you fink you are, judgin’ me all the time?!  You’re no one to talk, you—”  Arthur was halfway through his venomous retort when the illusion of his brother’s sneering face melted away to remind him he was verbally attacking a very shocked and confused Mary.  “Oh God!  I—I’m sorry!  I—it was—I’m sorry!”

            Horrified at his own actions, Arthur did the only thing he could ever think to do in that kind of situation:  he ran away.

            The only place he could think of to take shelter was the gent’s, where he started running cold water in the sink.  He couldn’t stick his head under the tap, so he just kept splashing the water on his face, hoping to calm down, or at least restore his sanity a bit.

            What had happened back there?  He’d never done anything like that before.  He’d never seen things before, either.  Maybe it was some kind of flashback.  He’d only done LSD the once, but…no, surely that couldn’t be it.  An LSD flashback was supposed to be repeating the original trip, not something that had happened so much earlier, wasn’t it?

            He was still trying to wash his face away when Lou entered the gent’s, looking at him with worry.  “Arthur, what’s going on?” he asked.  “I just heard from—”

            “I’m sorry,” Arthur said, as he shut the water back off.  “I didn’t mean to snap like that.  I…I don’t know what happened back there.”

            “Did Mary say something to upset you?”

            Arthur swallowed heavily.  “Not intentionally.  It just…reminded me of one of the last things my brother ever said to me.”  He shook his head.  “I…I’ve been on edge lately.  I didn’t mean to upset anyone…”

            “What’s wrong, Arthur?”  Lou set a hand on Arthur’s upper arm, patting gently.  “You can tell me.”

            “A few days ago, I got in a bit of a fight with my…date.”  No matter how understanding his editor usually seemed to be, Arthur didn’t think talking about having a boyfriend was a good idea…

            “That’s always rough,” Lou agreed, nodding.  “Well, if you can’t work things out with your girlfriend, my niece will be back in town soon.  I’m sure she’d be happy to see you again.”

            Arthur smiled weakly.  “It’s not…we’re not still fightin’.  It’s just left things a bit strained.”  Not to mention that the last thing he wanted was to get back together with the most deceitful ex-girlfriend he had.  He wouldn’t have had any objections to dating Lou’s niece if she had _told_ him from the start that his editor was her uncle.  But she only told him about that as she was about to head back to California to finish her journalism degree!  That hadn’t done much to encourage him to continue attempting to date women…

            “Well, why don’t you take the rest of the day off,” Lou suggested.  “Tomorrow, too.  It might be better if you’re not here when Theo comes looking for answers about that story.”

            Arthur nodded.  “That’s…that’s probably for the best,” he agreed.  “Thanks.”


	19. Chapter 19

            Curt was lying on his back on the floor of the TV room, his guitar still lying across his legs, even though he’d given up trying to work on that new song hours ago.  Alicia had been impressed with the first two songs he’d written in the last few days, since they were so different from his usual fare.  But when he said he was working on a third, she snapped—like usual—and told him to stop writing depressing songs and to write something fun and upbeat.  A love song to Tee, for example.

            Like _that_ made any fucking sense.

            He had tried to write a love song anyway.  Not about Tee—that’d be impossible—but a generic one, at first.  He’d written plenty of those in the past, after all.  It wasn’t working, so he’d tried to write one that was secretly about Arthur, but that everyone else would think was about a woman.  That hadn’t really worked out too well, either.  Of _course_ it hadn’t:  pretty face aside, he was actually the manliest guy Curt had ever dated.  In appearance, anyway.  His personality was more borderline.

            He might have stayed on the floor all day if the phone hadn’t started ringing.  It had actually been remarkably quiet since the ‘engagement’ had been announced.  Everyone must’ve been calling Tee for confirmation instead of him.  She wasn’t as likely to bite anyone’s head off, so maybe that wasn’t too surprising.

            Curt set his guitar aside and sat up, reaching for the phone.  “Yeah?” he said into the receiver, half expecting to hear Alicia yell at him for the way he answered the phone.

            “Curt?”  Arthur’s voice was odd.  It sounded like he was holding the phone at a distance from his face.

            “Arthur?  Is something wrong?”

            “I…I think I’m ‘aving a nervous breakdown.”

            In the thirty seconds or so that Curt tried to figure out some way to respond to that, he heard quick, short inhalations on the other end of the line.  “Are you crying?”

            “No,” Arthur insisted.  But Curt could practically hear the tears running down his face.

            “What’s going on?”

            Around short, gasping sobs, Arthur explained that he’d been in such a terrible mood at work that he’d been given two days off—which made no sense no matter how Curt looked at it—but that he was only feeling worse and worse back in his ‘flat’ and he was sure he was going completely off the deep end.  Curt really wanted to know all those details Arthur was leaving out—probably twice as many as he was including—but how could he ask?  The man was already crying.  Pry any further and who could know what might happen.

            “All right, just hang in there, okay?”

            “Can’t I come over?”

            “You gotta be fucking kidding me!  I was already under scrutiny _before_ Reynolds decided to target me in one of his speeches.  If anyone sees a man as pretty as you are come within ten miles of me, everyone’s gonna assume he was right.”  Curt sighed.  “Look, I’ll think of something, okay?  So just hold on until then.”

            Arthur promised around his sniffles—so much for the whole ‘stiff upper lip’ thing the English were so fucking proud of—that he’d do his best to carry on.  After about half a cigarette thinking about it, Curt decided the only thing he could do would be to take advantage of the situation he was already in.  So he called Tee.

            “Hello?”  Tee sounded like she’d been afraid to answer the phone.

            “Hey, it’s me,” Curt said.  “Look, I need a favor.”

            “C’mon, what am I supposed to do about _anything_?” Tee demanded.  “I went for a walk and a bunch of middle-aged men started asking me if I had my passport on me, and threatening to have me deported if I couldn’t produce it!  I don’t even _have_ a passport!”

            “What kind of middle-aged men?  White trash?”  Curt could just imagine his father pulling that kind of shit.

            “No, like Wall Street types.”

            “Fuck.”  Curt grimaced.  “Hopefully it’ll blow over.  I mean, your parents can produce all the paperwork, so it’s not like they could actually deport you.”

            “But what if someone’s destroyed the paperwork or they claim it was lost in a fire or that it’s a forgery, or—“

            “Okay, okay, I get it!  But even if they could force you to leave the country, you’d still be fine.  I’m sure your records sell all over the world.”

            “Yeah, but I don’t even speak Spanish!” Tee whined.

            “Tee, that’s what lawyers are for.  You can afford a really good lawyer.  They won’t railroad you into getting deported.  Worst comes to worst, you could flee to Canada.  They don’t even ask for a passport to go to Canada.”

            “Seriously?”

            “I’m pretty sure they don’t, anyway,” Curt said, shrugging.  “I think you can help me without leaving your house, okay?”

            “Oh?  How?”

            “You just have to call your manager and tell him you want to give an interview and present your side of the story,” Curt told her.  “But not an interview with just anybody…”


	20. Chapter 20

            Arthur had been more than a little suspicious about the offer of an exclusive interview.  It wasn’t as though he had any reason to trust the management company that had called Lou.  More importantly, how could he even be sure that was who had really called?  The address they’d given might have been a phony; it could have been a warehouse where he’d be beaten and murdered, or the home of a gang lord or…the list of possible disastrous outcomes seemed endless.

            Only when he arrived at the address did he start to relax a little.  It was a large corner brownstone, very clearly the one that had been shown in the news reports about Curt staying the night.  So if he was really called to Teresa Garcia’s house, then surely Curt would be waiting for him inside…?

            Still feeling a bit uncertain, he climbed the steps to the door and rang the bell.  After a few minutes, he could hear footsteps approaching.  There was a pause, then he could hear the bolt being slid aside.  Then the door was opened by Teresa Garcia herself, wearing the type of colourful dress she usually wore for her album covers.  She smiled at him brightly.  “So you must be Arthur Stuart,” she said.

            “Y-yes, that’s right, Miss Garcia.”

            “You can just call me Tee,” she laughed.  “C’mon inside.”

            Arthur followed her inside uncomfortably, wondering why Curt hadn’t answered the door himself.  Worse than that, he wasn’t even waiting in the hall…

            “The photographer’s already set up in the living room,” Teresa told him as she re-bolted the door.

            “Photographer?” Arthur repeated.  Surely this wasn’t an actual interview?

            “Mm-hmm.  My manager insisted on having a photographer for the interview,” Teresa told him, shaking her head.  “Anyway, just follow me.”

            Teresa’s home was elegantly decorated, but rather generic; it might have belonged to any moderately wealthy individual.  Apart from a Frieda Kahlo painting on one wall, there was nothing to indicate any connection with Teresa’s Mexican heritage, and there was no connection at all to her career as a pop singer.  It utterly lacked the rough charm of Curt’s sparse flat, in Arthur’s opinion.

            The photographer had set up lights in the living room, and was peering into a cabinet as Teresa and Arthur entered the room.  “He’s here,” Teresa said sharply, making the photographer jump slightly, and turn to face them.

            He walked over to Arthur and extended his hand.  “The name’s Dudley,” he said.  “Mack Dudley.  So you wrote that hack piece in the _Herald_?”

            “I don’t think it was a hack piece,” Arthur replied, trying not to snarl.

            “More like fiction, really,” Dudley said, nodding.

            “ _I_ thought it was a lovely article,” Teresa said coldly, “and that is why I asked to have this interview with him.  If you’re going to be rude, you can just leave.  I don’t need my picture taken yet again.  Everyone knows what I look like already.”

            Dudley bowed in her direction.  “You’re the boss, princess.”  Then he chuckled grimly.  “Wait, what’s the Spanish for princess?”

            “I wouldn’t know.  I only speak two languages:  English and French,” Teresa told him coldly.

            “That seems like an interestin’ point for the interview,” Arthur said.  “Why don’t you speak Spanish?  Doesn’t it make it difficult to communicate with family members still in Mexico?”

            Teresa sat down on the sofa, and gestured to Arthur to take a seat on one of the chairs facing it.  “My parents were very concerned about my future; they wanted to be sure I’d fit in.  That’s why they moved to Los Angeles when they did:  they wanted to be sure I’d be born here.  And as I was growing up, they wouldn’t allow anyone to speak Spanish in the house; everyone had to speak English.”  She laughed uncomfortably.  “It was difficult on my older siblings, as my brother Emilio likes to tell everyone every chance he gets.  But for me and my younger sister, it was…well, it was a good idea in theory.  I’m not sure it really helped much in the long run.  In LA, people tend to expect you to speak Spanish if you have tan skin and black hair.  Sometimes it’s awkward when they start talking to me and I can’t answer them.  I think that’s why I wanted to move here; no one expects me to speak anything but English here.”

            “How many siblings do you have?”

            “I have two older brothers, an older sister and a younger sister,” Teresa told him.

            “Wow.  That’s…wasn’t it hard to raise so many kids?  Financially?”

            Teresa laughed.  “Oh, no!  My father’s a surgeon, and my mother writes children’s television.  We were always the only Mexican family in the neighbourhoods where we lived.  Though the fact that we didn’t speak Spanish helped to hide that a bit.”

            “What made your parents want to move to the US?” Arthur asked.

            “My father’s one of the few surgeons in the world who specialises in his particular type of open-heart surgery,” Teresa told him.  “Honestly, I don’t understand the half of what he does, but he saves a lot of lives.  Because there are so few people who can do what he does, the hospital where he works now had been courting him for years.  He’d been reluctant to pick up and move the whole family, but when my mother told him she was pregnant again, he decided that was the time to accept.  My mother had a lot of trouble giving birth to my older sister, and they decided it was going to be safer for her to give birth in LA than in Mexico City.  I think.”  She shrugged.  “Obviously, it’s hard for me to know what went into a decision made before I was born!” she added, with a laugh.

            “Obviously,” Arthur agreed.  “Well, I guess we should probably get to the main point,” he went on, finding himself uncertain how to proceed.  He hadn’t prepared, since he had expected this to be a romantic rendezvous with Curt.  “You wanted to publically tell your side of the story about your relationship with Curt Wild, so if—”  Arthur stopped talking and flinched unconsciously as Dudley suddenly snapped a photograph of him.  Until that moment, the man had only been photographing Teresa from a dozen different angles as she talked.  “What the bloody hell are you doin’?!” Arthur demanded.  “Don’t take pictures of _me_!  I’m not the subject of the interview!”

            “Relax, limey.  Whatcha afraid of?”

            “If you make one more derogatory remark, I’m going to insist that you leave my house,” Teresa told the photographer coldly.

            Dudley just shrugged, and snapped a picture of her still looking ticked off.

            Teresa grimaced, and turned back to Arthur.  “I’m sorry, what was the question again?”

            “Uh, just...your side of the story.  About you and Curt.”  Arthur suddenly worried that maybe he shouldn’t have referred to Curt quite so casually, but he didn’t have a chance to amend his statement before Teresa answered him.

            “I’ve known Curt since I was little,” she said.  “Emilio had a garage band back in the late ‘60s, and he and Curt did some of the same out-of-state shows, where they became friends.  I guess it was in 1969 that Curt came to LA to enter a big rock’n’roll contest.  Emilio hadn’t even made the preliminary round, but Curt made it all the way to the televised finals.”

            “That was his first television appearance, right?”  Arthur had watched recordings of that.  It hadn’t been an original song, but the performance had been fantastic.  “I don’t understand what the judges were thinkin’, givin’ the prize to someone else.”

            Teresa laughed.  “Well, I think it was because Curt hadn’t written the song himself, and the other band had.  The fact that the other band never accomplished anything and Curt went on to be one of the biggest stars of the ‘70s just proves that judges aren’t always right.”  She shrugged.  “Anyway, Curt came to our house to visit Emilio a lot while he was in town, and we were all terribly fond of him.  My older sister completely fell in love with him, in fact—not that Curt even noticed she existed!”

            No doubt he only had eyes for Emilio.  “What about you?” Arthur asked.  “How old were you?”

            “I was almost eight, and I guess I had a pretty bad crush on him, too,” she said, with a shy smile that almost looked genuine.  Arthur wondered if maybe she _had_ fancied Curt when she was a little girl, before she had realised she preferred women.  Assuming that Curt had been telling the truth about her being a lesbian.  “I didn’t totally understand it, of course.  I just did everything I could to hang out with them as much as possible.  Curt’s the one who gave me the nickname Tee, you know.  He said Teresa was too refined a name for someone who climbed trees like a monkey.”

            Arthur laughed.  “I can just imagine him sayin’ that,” he agreed.  For some reason, that made the irritating photographer take another picture of him.  “Lay off!”

            “Really, haven’t you taken enough pictures already?” Teresa demanded.  “Why don’t you just go home?”

            “What, and miss the rest of the story?”

            “You—”

            Teresa’s retort was cut off by the sound of the front door to the house opening again.  “I brought lunch, baby!” Curt’s voice shouted from the direction of the door.  Waves of relief washed through Arthur at the sound.

            “The interview’s still going!” Teresa called out to him.  “Did you bring enough for four?”

            “Four…?” Curt repeated, sounding confused.  He looked around as he entered the room, carrying three pizza boxes.  A scowl soon covered his face.  “Whose idea was the photographer?”

            “My manager’s,” Teresa sighed, getting to her feet.  She walked over to Curt and leaned in to give him a very unconvincing kiss, which Dudley took several photos of.  “Why don’t you take the food into the kitchen?”

            Curt nodded, and disappeared through a side door.  By the time he came back, Teresa had resumed her tale, but Arthur was having trouble paying attention to it, especially after Curt’s return from the kitchen.  As soon as Dudley’s attention was diverted to having to change out his roll of film, Curt made eye contact with Arthur, and started trying to mouth something at him.  However, Arthur’s skill at lip-reading was insufficient to give him any idea what Curt was trying to say.  Curt soon gave up on that, and began miming actions at him.  Arthur’s first inclination was to think he was suggesting that he wanted a good wank, but by the time Dudley finished changing the film, Arthur realised that Curt was trying to indicate that he should go to the loo.

            That realisation made Arthur grimace, and start massaging his forehead with one hand.  What on earth was Curt thinking?

            “Is something the matter?” Teresa asked.

            Arthur gasped, looking back up at her again.  “Ah, I’m…I’m a little…feelin’ a little out of it.  Er, is there a WC I could use…?”

            “Of course,” Teresa said, with a smile.  “It’s just down the hall that way,” she added, pointing in the direction of the kitchen.  “First door on the left.”

            Arthur followed her directions and soon found himself in a claustrophobically small room with nothing other than a toilet and a sink.  He locked the door as soon as he was inside; if Curt was planning on joining him in there and doing something stupid that would let that photographer hear them, well, he was going to be disappointed.  Arthur hadn’t managed to hide that side of his life for all these years to be exposed _that_ easily.

            Glancing around the room, he noticed a tiny scrap of paper sticking out of one of the folded towels beside the sink.  Pulling out the paper, Arthur found “Can you force yourself to puke?” written in Curt’s handwriting.

            Why…?

            Well, no matter the reason, Arthur did _not_ want to throw up.  Instead, he turned on the cold water, and got his face thoroughly wet, leaving drops all over it, in the hopes it would look like he had broken out in a cold sweat.  Not, perhaps, the most convincing display, but…a lot more pleasant than vomiting.

            When he went back out, he found Dudley taking photos of Curt and Teresa sitting together on the sofa, looking far more couple-like than they had a few minutes earlier with that kiss.  Teresa noticed Arthur, and they both stood up.  “Are you all right?” she asked.  “You look pale.”

            “I’m not feelin’ too good,” Arthur said.  “I’d been takin’ a sick day before this assignment came in.”

            “Why didn’t you say so?!” Teresa exclaimed, then turned to Curt.  “Go to the kitchen and call my doctor.  The number’s in the Rolodex.  He’ll make a house call.”  Then she turned to the photographer, and smiled tightly.  “You can leave now, Mr. Dudley.  The interview’s obviously over for the moment.  Just send your pictures to my manager—or to Mr. Stuart’s paper.  Either one.  Or both, if you’d prefer.”

            “Eh, just like that?” Dudley asked, even as Curt headed back into the kitchen.  “He don’t look sick to me.”

            “The interview is over,” Teresa repeated.  “Go.”

            As Arthur sank back down into the chair where he had been sitting—trying his best to look exhausted and ill—Dudley packed up his gear, complaining all the while.  Curt soon came back from the kitchen and reported that the doctor was on his way.  Arthur could hear Dudley grumbling the whole way to the front door.  And after the door had closed again, he could also hear Teresa releasing a stream of vicious-sounding French.  The few words he recognised were definitely impolite language of the sort that would never be taught in school.

            Curt grinned at the sound, and bent over in front of Arthur, bringing their faces close together.  “Sorry that took so long,” he said, before giving him a passionate kiss.

            “It’s okay,” Arthur assured him.  “As long as we can be together, that’s all that matters, even if it’s only for a little while.”

            They were kissing again when Teresa came back into the room.  “What about lunch?” she asked, with a deep sigh.  “You don’t want the pizza to get cold, do you?”

            “That’s what microwaves are for,” Curt retorted.

            “Gross.  Pizza reheated in a microwave is nasty.  Eat lunch first, _then_ fool around,” Teresa insisted.

            “Don’t take it out on me ‘cause you haven’t gotten laid lately,” Curt said, turning to look at her.

            Teresa crossed her arms with a testy expression.  “Unlike _you_ , I don’t sleep with every pretty face I see!  I only go to bed with someone if I really _care_ about her.”

            Curt chortled.  “If I was that picky, I’d never have slept with any girls at all.”

            Arthur got to his feet, and set a hand on Curt’s arm.  “Maybe we should just go eat the pizza,” he suggested.  “Since you already bought it.”  And so that he wouldn’t have to hear any more arguments involving Curt’s sex life.

            Curt shrugged, and headed into the kitchen without a word.  As Arthur followed him, Teresa started walking by his side.  “I’m glad to finally meet you,” she said, smiling at him.  It felt much more genuine than most of the smiles she had displayed during the interview.  “Curt’s told me so much about you.”

            “R-really?  It—it’s only been a few weeks since—”

            Teresa laughed.  There was an almost cruel edge to the sound.  “I saw the original lyrics to ‘The Stars Are Falling,’ and wouldn’t let up about it until he told me the story behind it,” she explained.

            “That’s mortifyin’…”  Just how many people had he shared that story with?  As flattered as Arthur was to think that Curt had remembered their night together so fondly, the idea of him going about telling people about what an easy lay he had been went beyond humiliating.

            “Oh, I thought it was beautiful!  Well, the parts that weren’t disgusting, anyway.  I’ve never had anyone I could write such a passionate song about,” Teresa sighed.  “Never had anyone who’d want to write one like that about me, either.  Though I’ve never been involved with a song-writer before, come to think of it.”

            “Mandy writes songs sometimes,” Curt pointed out, looking over at them from the kitchen counter, where he was opening one of the pizza boxes.  “Maybe you should get something going with her.”

            “Um, yeah, she’s a little older than I usually like my girlfriends,” Teresa said, shaking her head.  “I mean, maybe there’d be a spark or something, but…I don’t normally want to date someone old enough to be my mother.”

            “She’s younger than I am,” Curt pointed out coldly.

            “So?”

            “Bitch.”

            Teresa laughed gaily at the insult, making Curt flip her off.

            “What kind of pizza do you want?” Curt asked Arthur, ignoring Teresa’s continued amusement.  “I got a supreme, three meat and hamburger.”

            “People seriously put hamburgers on pizza?” Arthur asked, appalled.

            “Not whole ones!” Curt laughed.  “It’s just bits of hamburger.  It’s pretty good, if you like hamburger.”  He shrugged.  “You must not spend much time in pizza places.”

            “No, not really.”

            “Well, you’re not gonna find any toppings like corn in _this_ country.”

            “Eeew, who’d ever put _corn_ on a pizza?!” Teresa exclaimed, sounding horrified.

            “It’s commonly offered back home,” Arthur told her, “but it’s not something routinely ordered.”

            “The English have no working taste buds,” Curt said, with a laugh.  “That’s why they drink warm beer.”

            “That doesn’t even make sense.  And considerin’ what American beer tastes like, I don’t think you’ve got any room to talk.”

            “All beer is disgusting, no matter what temperature it is,” Teresa insisted.  “It looks like urine and smells like vomit.  Why would you ever want to put it in your mouth?”

            “At least it doesn’t come with worms in it,” Curt laughed.

            “I don’t drink that stuff, either.”

            “What _do_ you drink?” Arthur asked.

            “She’s too young for booze,” Curt said, “so she just drinks pop.”

            “I’m almost twenty-three!” Teresa snapped, stamping one foot.  “And there’s nothing wrong with preferring soda to alcohol.”

            Throughout their luncheon, Curt continued to tease Teresa about her youth while she teased him back about his age.  Considering how childish both sides of the conversation were, it was surprisingly pleasant to listen to.

            After they finished eating, Curt led Arthur up two narrow flights of stairs to the second floor, into a nice, warm bedroom that was furnished in a rougher style than the rooms downstairs.  They both sat down on the bed, and Curt insisted on Arthur explaining every detail of what had happened to make him so upset.  Arthur really didn’t want to talk about it, but Curt was brooking no denial, and soon enough Arthur had begun the pathetic tale.

            He ended up talking for so long that his throat was starting to hurt by the time Curt finally silenced him with a kiss.

            They kept kissing for a long time before Arthur started trying to get Curt’s shirt off.  Once he started that process, Curt started tugging on Arthur’s shirt, too.  Soon they stopped kissing altogether in order to devote their attention entirely to disrobing each other.

            Curt stopped halfway into removing his trousers, and reached into his back pocket.  Realising that he was going for a condom, Arthur put his hand on Curt’s wrist.  “Don’t,” he said.

            “Huh?”

            “I…I want to feel _you_ inside me,” Arthur said, feeling inordinately uncomfortable about having to actually say it.  “Not a condom.  I want to feel your skin against mine.  I want to feel you filling me…”  He wasn’t the least bit used to saying such things; his face was probably the colour of an overripe tomato…

            “Arthur, the chances of—between all the sleeping around and—I don’t know that all my needles were clean.  I’m probably—you’d probably be signing your death warrant if we don’t use protection,” Curt said, a pained look in his eyes.

            “I don’t care,” Arthur insisted.  “No, that’s _why_ I don’t want it!  I—I couldn’t face the idea of livin’ in a world without you in it.”

            “Arthur…”  Curt pulled him close and kissed him passionately.  “I love you.”


	21. Chapter 21

            Mack Dudley had always thought of himself as an astute observer of the human condition.  He _understood_ people.  Didn’t like the fuckers, but he understood them.

            So he hadn’t been surprised by anything Theodore Kaufmann had said to him at the last committee meeting, and he hadn’t been surprised that Kaufmann was wasting his time telling him, either.  Because Mack understood people.

            The meeting had been held last Saturday, right after the story had broken about Curt Wild supposedly getting involved with Teresa Garcia.  Some of the other senior members of the Committee for Cultural Renewal had actually been fooled by that ludicrous act, but not Mack.  And not Kaufmann, either.

            “I’ve got some inside information proving Wild’s not involved with that Mexican cunt,” Kaufmann had said, nodding his head.  “A friend of ours,” he went on, gesturing at the committee’s meeting room, “told me in confidence a little secret about Wild.  That English faggot he was fucking ten years ago gave him a pretty green bauble, and the fag is a sentimental creature, so Wild wears it everywhere.  But our mutual friend told me that Wild wasn’t wearing it on Harry Spooner’s show.  So he’s got a new lover, and he’s passed on that little bauble.”

            “Could be the Garcia woman,” one of the others pointed out.

            “A fag doesn’t change his stripes,” Mack laughed.  “This whole thing with Garcia is just trying to make us forget he’s queer.”

            “Exactly,” Kaufmann agreed.  “And I’ve seen who he _did_ pass that green bauble on to.  Another Englishman.  A reporter who works for that newspaper my father bought a few years back.”

            When the management company called in to hire a freelance photographer to get pictures of Garcia being interviewed, of course Mack had leaped at the chance.  Get some proof that she wasn’t the one now wearing that green bauble.  And somehow get the right proof that she wasn’t really involved with Wild at all.  And if he could get proof she really hadn’t been born in America, well, that’d be great, but…actually, Mack was pretty sure she really _was_ an American, no matter her parents’ nationality, so he wasn’t holding his breath on that score.

            But the score he did get!  Who showed up to conduct the interview but the Brit with the green bauble?

            That, of course, wouldn’t prove anything unless Kaufmann’s source was willing to go on the record about that green bauble.  And if he’d been willing to do that, he’d surely have done it in the first place.  Mack suspected the source was probably Tommy Stone—he was quite tight with Kaufmann’s employers over at CMA—and he wouldn’t want to admit knowing anything about Curt Wild or any other ‘70s rocker, given how he had literally appeared out of nowhere right at the end of the 1970s, and his vocabulary made it pretty clear that the accent he was trying to hide was an English one.  Mack knew enough about people to know that Stone was clearly on his second career, and that his first was in England, and something to be ashamed of.  He didn’t care about the details beyond that.  Why would he?

            So Mack was having to go out of his way to get some real proof.  Garcia had kicked him out of her house soon after her ‘fiancé’ arrived with pizza for three.  The pizza was fresh and real—and had smelled pretty good, actually—so they were probably going to eat it, but then Mack was hoping that they’d do something stupid where he’d be able to get a shot of it.

            Behind Garcia’s brownstone was a footpath between the houses on her street and the ones on the next street over.  A row of tall, narrow trees grew beside that path, providing a better view out of the back windows of those houses than the back windows of the other houses.  With luck, Wild and his foreign boyfriend would think those trees meant no one could see them, and wouldn’t bother closing the curtains before doing shameful things together…

            To get the best possible view, Mack had taken advantage of the time they were going to spend eating the pizza, and had climbed up the fire escape of one of the houses on the other side of the path, making his way onto the roof, where he’d set up his camera on a tripod, attaching his most powerful zoom lens.  He wasn’t sure which window to watch, but of all the windows he could see on Garcia’s house, two were bedroom windows.  Using his binoculars, Mack kept a close watch on those two windows.

            He had to wait half an hour, but his patience paid off.  Through the third floor bedroom window, he could see Wild and his boyfriend taking seats on the edge of the bed, where they proceeded to talk and talk and talk.  It might have been quite illuminating if he’d been able to hear them, but without being able to, it was mind-numbingly boring.  He took a few photos of them together like that, but it didn’t prove a damned thing, except that the reporter had been lying when he claimed to be sick.

            Finally, after another forty-five minutes or so, they started kissing.  Again, a few photos, but just kissing wasn’t very sensational.  It didn’t prove that Wild and Garcia weren’t involved at all.  The Brit could be an ex-boyfriend or something.

            Proof followed pretty quickly.  The fags started stripping each others’ clothes off, then spent a while longer kissing.  Then they did something that made Mack’s whole body start hurting:  rather than one of them standing and bending over to take it up the ass, the reporter laid down on his back on the bed, and Wild folded him up like a damned card table, hooking the taller man’s feet over his shoulders, and started fucking him face to face as if he was a woman.  Mack took some photos of it—it was fortunate for him that the bed was parallel to the window, giving him the best possible angle on the action—but he was pretty sure no one was going to believe the photos were real.

            After they were done, they cuddled up together and fell asleep.  Finally!  Mack must have taken a dozen photos of them spooning like that.  They both had their faces towards the window, and his downward angle meant he got perfect shots of both faces.  Perfect, _recognizable_ shots.

            This was gonna win him _awards_.

 

***

 

            It was dark outside when Arthur woke up.  The first thing he was aware of—even before he felt Curt’s arm draped across his waist—was the fact that the backs of his thighs were killing him.  The last time he’d had sex in such a dramatic position was when he was eighteen, and apparently a lot more limber.

            The pain in his legs notwithstanding, he didn’t regret it for a moment.  There was something so much more romantic about being able to look into his lover’s face as they made love.  And they had been almost crazily romantic, a lot more talkative than they ever had been before.  He knew that Curt probably didn’t mean any of what he had said, but that didn’t change the beauty of the fact that he had been willing to say it, even if he _had_ only been swept away in the heat of the moment.

            “You awake?” Curt whispered.

            “Yeah.”

            “Good.  I’m fucking starving.”

            Arthur laughed.  “Mm, me too.”  He shifted in bed a bit, so he could look at Curt, though it was hard to see him in the darkness.  “Ah…I…”  He knew there was something he needed to say, but he couldn’t quite find it.

            “Hey, I was thinking,” Curt said, cutting off Arthur’s non-speech.  “I figured out how we can deal with the whole situation.”

            “Yeah?  What situation?”

            “You know, the thing with the marriage and all.  ‘Cause now that Reynolds is accusing Tee of not having been born in this country, we pretty much have to go through with the wedding or they’ll start trying to deport her.”  Curt shook his head.  “But, see, I figured out a solution.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yeah.  You buy the house next door—”

            “Curt, I can barely afford the rent on my tiny flat, and I’m sure to lose my job any day now,” Arthur sighed.  “I can’t buy a house.”

            “Well, Mandy can buy it, and you can move in with her, like you’re her trophy boyfriend,” Curt said, with a laugh.  “But thing is, after you’re living in the house next door, and I’m living here with Tee, then we can put a door through the wall between the two houses, and come and go whenever we want, without anyone seeing!  Perfect, right?”

            Arthur chuckled.  “It does sound good,” he agreed.  “But what if her neighbours don’t want to sell?”

            “Then we’ll find two row houses next to each other that are both on sale,” Curt said, shrugging.  “C’mon, don’t use logic to ruin a perfectly good fantasy!”

            “Sorry.”  By way of further apology, Arthur kissed him.  “Should we get dressed and go get dinner now?”

            “Yeah.”

            While they were getting into their clothes, Arthur couldn’t help worrying about something.  “Am I goin’ to have to go back home after we eat?”

            “I doubt anyone’s watching this place,” Curt answered, shaking his head.  “Besides, since Tee’s here, too, even if anyone does notice that you don’t leave until tomorrow morning, they’ll assume that I’m with her and you’re the odd man out.”  He paused a minute.  “Or that we’re having a three-way.”

            Arthur laughed.  “Terrifyin’ thought.”

            “It can be pretty fun, actually.”

            “Curt, I really didn’t want to know you’d ever done that.”

            Curt laughed, and kissed him.  “Better be nice to me, then, or I’ll give you all the details.”

            “I was goin’ to be nice to you anyway,” Arthur assured him.


	22. Chapter 22

            For the first time since the rumour of Curt being involved with Teresa began circulating, Arthur felt really good as he was on his way to work.  He’d seen first-hand that there was nothing between the two of them, and Curt had given him very hard proof that he wanted to continue seeing Arthur, no matter what.  He had even said that he loved Arthur.  Admittedly, Arthur wasn’t quite naïve enough to take him at his word—especially considering how very aroused he had been when he said it—but the fact that he had said it at all was surely proof that he was very serious indeed.  Hopefully, they’d stay together long enough that Curt could come to mean what he had already said.

            Of course, Arthur had been forced to leave Teresa's house very early this morning—Curt had barely been awake when he left—so that he could go back to his own flat and get himself properly prepared for work in his normal fashion.  So he was still quite tired when he walked into the _Herald_ offices, but it was a kind of tired he could live with, gladly.  He hadn’t even sat down at his desk before Lou asked him for a word in private.  That wasn’t a good sign, but what could Arthur do about it?  He had no choice other than to follow the old man into his office.

            Once there, Lou handed Arthur a rival paper.  It wasn’t quite a tabloid, but it was close; the kind of paper that ran sensationalist stories for the fun of it, and tended to focus on local, lightweight affairs rather than matters of national or international importance.  One of the headlines on the front page read “Proof that the Wild/Garcia Engagement is a Fraud!”

            Arthur thought he knew what he would see inside.  Interviews with people who had seen him and Curt out on their dates.  Or with people who lived in Curt’s building and had seen Arthur go into Curt’s flat one night and not emerge until the next morning.

            So he wasn’t prepared to open the paper and find a photograph of himself and Curt asleep in bed together, their nudity hidden only with a censor bar.

            Arthur’s knees buckled, and he collapsed into the nearest chair.  “How…?” was the only thing he could say.  With trembling hands, he turned the pages of the paper and found more photos, most of them kissing, but also one of them getting ready to make love.  All of them had been taken in that second storey bedroom of Teresa Garcia’s house.

            “Are the photos real?” Lou asked, his voice quite flat.

            All Arthur could do was nod.

            “How did they take them?”

            Arthur shrugged.

            Lou sighed deeply, and sat down in his own chair.  “Theo sent that down first thing this morning,” he said.  “I won’t tell you exactly what he said in the message that he sent with it.  But the gist of it is that he wants your employment at this paper terminated.”

            Arthur nodded numbly.

            “I’m really very sorry, Arthur.  You had a lot of promise in this business.”

            ‘Had.’  Of course.  Because who would ever hire him now that he’d been exposed in every sense of the word?

            “If you’d told me what was going on sooner, I might have been able to do something to prevent this,” Lou went on.

            “How?” Arthur asked, his eyes still glued to the prying photographs.  “Whoever took these photos…there’s nothin’ you could’ve done to stop  him.”  It had to have been that wanker who’d been sent to photograph the ‘interview,’ but Arthur couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to take the pictures.  It was true they hadn’t closed the drapes—Arthur wasn’t even sure there had been any drapes to close!—but there was nothing behind the house except trees.  Had the man been sitting in a tree, hoping to get these photos?

            “If I’d known you were…less than impartial, I could have stopped you from printing your response to the President’s speech.  The text accompanying those photos makes it clear they want to discredit your article even more than the engagement.”

            Without that response, they might not have even had the excuse needed to get Arthur there in the first place.  In which case he’d still be a nervous wreck…though he had probably already become one again anyway.  Arthur let out a deep breath.  “There’s no point in worryin’ about it now.  It’s too late.”

            “You’re too young to give up all hope,” Lou said, patting him on the shoulder.  “I’m sure things will turn around somehow.  If you need a letter of recommendation, I’ll be happy to write one for you, but call me at home.  If you go through the office, Theo might find out.  I’d hate to be fired so close to retirement.”  Close to retirement?  Lou was at least five years _over_ retirement age…

            Arthur nodded, still feeling numbed by the circumstances he was suddenly in.

            “You should probably clean out your desk and go home before anyone in the office gets wind of what happened,” Lou went on.  “They’re not all going to understand.”

            Stiffly, Arthur got to his feet, and went back to his desk.  No one came near as he was cleaning out his few belongings.  They surely knew he was being fired, but hopefully they thought it was over his story earlier—the same one they had been praising so highly—and they worried they’d be ‘contaminated’ by his disgrace.  And with someone like Theodore Kaufmann at the reins, they probably would be.

            The trip back to his flat was dismal, and Arthur kept imagining that people were staring at him.  Whenever he looked around, no one was paying him the least bit of attention, but…he kept feeling as though they were.  It was thoroughly unsettling.

            As soon as he was back in his flat, Arthur called Curt, but there was no answer.  He was probably still at Teresa’s house.  Maybe he’d just stay there in a vain attempt to allay suspicion.  Whatever Curt ended up doing, hopefully he’d try to call Arthur as soon as he found out about the article.

            There was the question, of course, of just how much attention the article was getting.  It was thankfully only a local paper, and not really one with good circulation.  But with a headline like that on the front page, there would surely be a lot of people who’d pick up a copy as they passed it on a newsstand.

            While he waited for Curt to call, Arthur turned on the television, and checked the different channels.  One local station was still running a morning chat programme, so he stayed with that to see if it would say anything, but it never did.

            By midmorning, Arthur was tired of waiting for the telephone to ring, so he tried calling Curt again.  This time, the call was answered.  From the strain in Curt’s voice, he already knew.

            “It’s me,” Arthur said.  “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

            “Yeah.  Are you calling from work?”

            “I’ve been fired.”

            “Shit.  Guess I’m not surprised, though.  You said you were likely to get fired anyway, didn’t you?”

            “Yeah.  It was probably more because of the Reynolds piece than the photos,” Arthur admitted.  “Um…can I come over?  It’s miserable here.”

            “I had to fight my way through a mob of reporters just to get into the building,” Curt said.  “If they see you coming in here…”  His voice trailed off for a moment or two.  “Right now, the management company is trying to convince people the photos are fake.  We can’t risk being seen again while they’re claiming that.”

            “Who’d ever believe they’re fake?”

            “No one.  But if I do something to show they’re not while my manager’s out there claiming they are?  That’s a good way to end up with no manager.  Though maybe no one’s gonna want to hear me sing again anyway.”

            “You gettin’ involved with Brian never hurt your career any,” Arthur reminded him.  In fact, it had _revived_ Curt’s career when it was on the brink of destruction.

            “That was before the world became this shithole,” Curt grumbled.  “But maybe you’re right.  I actually already got a concert offer, but…”

            “But what?”

            “It’s for an AIDS research fund.  That’s kinda…pushing it.  Flaunting it at time when I’m supposed to be denying it.”

            “So you told them 'no'?” Arthur asked.

            “Technically, I told them I’d think about it.  Which usually means ‘no,’ I guess.”

            Arthur chuckled, a bit glumly.

            “Are you gonna be able to…do you have enough money to keep paying your rent?” Curt asked, after a lengthy pause.

            “Not really.  I think I’ve got maybe half of next month’s rent in my bank account right now.  And that’s only if I don’t eat between now and the first of the month.”

            Curt let out a deep sigh.  “We’ll have to do something about that.  Don’t worry, okay?  I won’t let you end up in the street.  But if this doesn’t simmer down, I may have to ask Mandy to loan you some money or something.  No one’s gonna be paying much attention to what _she_ does.”

            There was no part of that idea that sat well with Arthur, but what could he do other than thank Curt for it?  He certainly didn’t want to end up in the street, and if he couldn’t find a new job, that could easily enough happen.  Even if he sold all his belongings, he wouldn’t raise enough to finish paying even one month’s rent.


	23. Chapter 23

            In order to save a little money, Arthur decided to skip lunch.  He’d have skipped dinner, too, if he had thought he could manage it, but his stomach was informing him that he absolutely could not.  So he had to go and get some take-out, hoping that no one in the neighbourhood had yet seen the photos of him and Curt.

            Judging by the stares he was getting, they absolutely had.  But aside from giving him a bit of a wide berth, so far they weren’t doing anything.

            As he was waiting to order his food, Arthur cringed slightly at the sight of someone he knew approaching him:  Lloyd, a black fellow about his own age, who lived a few doors down.  As Lloyd stopped beside him, Arthur did his best to smile at him and greet him politely.

            “I saw those photos,” Lloyd said quietly.  “I wish I’d known.”

            “Excuse me?”

            “I’ve had a crush on you ever since you moved in,” Lloyd admitted, with a shy smile.  “But I figured you were straight, so I didn’t want to say anything.”

            “Oh.  I—I wish you’d said something before.”  It was certainly too late now, but Lloyd was a good-looking man, and very nice; far nicer than Brad, that was for sure.

            “Have you been having any problems since those pictures got printed?”

            Arthur nodded.  “I lost my job.”

            “Oh!”  Lloyd patted his pockets, then turned towards the counter.  “Hey, ma’am, can I borrow a pen?”

            The woman behind the counter tossed a pen at Lloyd.  He caught it, and started writing something on his receipt.

            “What…?” Arthur started, but stopped quickly, finding he didn’t know quite what to ask.

            Lloyd soon handed him the receipt, on which he had written the name Jenny Forsyth, along with a telephone number.  “My boss,” he explained, with a smile.  “She might give you a job.  I don’t know that the magazine needs any new writers at the moment, but everyone was really impressed with that last article you published.”

            Arthur thanked Lloyd profusely, and put the receipt in his wallet for safe-keeping.  When he exited with his food, he found that Lloyd had waited outside for him, and they walked back to the building together.  Lloyd, of course, was curious about how long Arthur had been seeing Curt, and how serious they were.  And Lloyd told Arthur about his own troubles finding a man, and how much trouble he had gotten in when his family had found out he was gay.  Arthur could relate to that all too well.

            They parted ways in the hallway outside Arthur’s flat, but he found himself in a far better mood than he’d been expecting to be in for a long time to come.  If there was a chance that he could get a new job—and so quickly!—then maybe everything wasn’t quite so hopeless as it had appeared this morning.  He was tempted to call Curt and tell him about the new development, but decided not to, just in case it didn’t pan out.

            The next morning, Arthur called the number Lloyd had written on the receipt.  “You’ve reached _Freedoms_ ,” a woman’s voice said.  “This is Libby.  How can I help you?”

            “Uh, I was given this number and the name Jenny Forsyth?” Arthur said.

            “Oh?  What did you want to talk to Ms. Forsyth about?”

            “Er, about gettin’ a job?  I was given this number by one of my neighbours, Lloyd—”

            “Oh, God, Lloyd again,” the woman sighed.  “Lemme guess, you’re his new boyfriend?”

            “Um, no…”

            “Really?  Well, do you have any qualifications?  What job are you even looking for, anyway?”

            “Uh, I’m—I _was_ a journalist,” Arthur said, then quickly explained his situation.

            “Oh!  I saw that article in the _Herald_.  Let me put you on hold a minute, and I’ll see if Ms. Forsyth can talk to you right now,” the woman said.  Without waiting for confirmation from Arthur, there was a click, and the line went silent.  It remained silent for almost five minutes, then another click preceded the return of the woman’s voice.  “Okay, Ms. Forsyth is very busy right now, but she’s got an opening in her schedule about one o’clock, so why don’t you come and talk to her in person?”

            “All right.  Where is your office located?”

            “Lloyd didn’t tell you?  Ugh, he’s so unreliable!”  The woman on the other end of the line sighed deeply.  “He’s lucky he’s such a talented photographer, or he’d never be able to hold a job.”  She gave him the address of the magazine’s office, then hung up the line.

            Having to wait until the early afternoon was frustrating, but Arthur tried to use the time to prepare.  It had been years since he’d taken part in a job interview, after all.  And he wasn’t entirely sure what kind of magazine it was.  But if they knew that Lloyd was gay and still let him work there, it must have been an understanding workplace.

            When he arrived there, Arthur found that _Freedoms_ was headquartered in an old row house.  All the houses along that little strip seemed to have been converted to businesses:  some of them were small shops, and there were half a dozen types of offices, from lawyers and doctors to travel agents.  Inside, the _Freedoms_ office was decorated with poster-sized copies of the front covers of old issues, which quickly made it apparent that the magazine catered to an entirely gay and lesbian readership.  The woman he had spoken to on the phone—Libby, a thirtyish redhead—sat at a desk near the front door, and quickly led him through the small maze of desks to a closed door in the back corner.

            She knocked, then opened the door and poked her head through.  “Your one o’clock’s here,” she said.  “You ready to see him?”

            The response from the other side of the door didn’t sound terribly pleased, but Libby ushered Arthur in through the door regardless.  On the other side, he found a very sombre, business-like office, nearly entirely devoid of decoration.  At the desk in the centre of the room, a woman in a suit was scowling at him, looking even more sombre than her office.  “I’m not running a charity,” she told him, before Arthur was even half-way to her desk.

            “Um…what?”

            “I just want you to understand that I can’t simply hand out work to every man who loses his job when his boss finds out he’s gay, no matter _who_ your boyfriend is.”

            “I’m not askin’ for charity,” Arthur assured her.  “I’ve been workin’ in this business for four years, and I—”

            “Yes, yes, I called the _Herald_ and spoke to your former editor,” she said, waving her hand to shut him up.  “Sit down.  You’re making me nervous, hovering like that.”

            “Yes’m,” Arthur answered instinctively, before taking a seat facing her desk.

            The woman smirked for a moment, then shook her head.  “I’m not ‘ma’am’ or any variation on it.  I’m ‘Ms. Forsyth’ to you.”

            “All right, Ms. Forsyth.”

            “Good, you can at least take instructions,” she said, nodding.

            “I’m not sure I understand,” Arthur said, after the room was silent for a moment or two.  “Surely Lou didn’t give you to believe I’m a troublemaker, or…”

            “You’ve got a Y chromosome.  That’s troublemaking enough.”

            “Er…”

            Ms. Forsyth laughed.  “The fact is, we’re short on funds, and overstaffed at the moment.  _However_ , if your current situation is resolved properly, it might help the general cause.  So, cards on the table.  Are you seriously involved with Curt Wild, or was it a one-night stand?”

            “We’re very serious,” Arthur assured her.

            “And his engagement?”

            “Their managers are behind it.  I don’t think I’ve got the right to say why, exactly.  It’s not…it’s not my place to talk about it.”

            She nodded.  “How long are they planning on pretending the engagement is real?”

            Arthur shrugged.  “I’d like to know that myself,” he admitted.  “Right before those pictures were printed, Curt was talkin’ about actually goin’ through with the marriage and goin’ to great lengths to let us still see each other without people noticin’.  But that’s probably changed now.”

            Ms. Forsyth scowled.  “Well, _if_ he comes clean and does it right, it might help to make people at large a little more accepting.  Or it might make it worse.”  She shook her head.  “I’m willing to give you a provisional position with two conditions.”

            “What’re the conditions?”

            “One, that your affair not be handled so badly as to give the gay community yet another black eye.  I realize that’s largely out of your hands, but…I won’t hesitate to cut you off, even if it’s not remotely your own fault.”

            Arthur bit his lip.  “Hardly fair, but I can see your point.  What’s the other condition?”

            “Your former employer has refused all requests to have your article about Reynolds’ homophobia reprinted in other newspapers.  So you have a trial assignment to re-write that article to fit our style, and with enough differences from your earlier article that the _Herald_ has no opportunity to sue us.”

            “I can do that,” Arthur assured her.  “When do you need it by?”

            “Our street date is the first of the month, but I’ll need your article a bit earlier than usual, since I can’t be sure how well you’ll manage to blend with our style.  So for this assignment, I’ll want the fully polished article turned in a week from Thursday.”

            “Wow, that long?”  Arthur couldn’t help laughing.  “That’s no problem at all.  Uh, do I need to show up daily in the meantime, or…?”

            “No, you can write wherever you want.  Frankly, we don’t have the office space to have everyone working on the premises.  Pick up some back issues on your way out, so you’ll understand how our articles usually read.”

            “I will.  Thanks.”  Arthur got to his feet.  “You won’t regret this.”

            “Obviously not, since you’ll only be hired if you do a good job.”


	24. Chapter 24

            Curt wasn’t sure what was worse:  that no one had really paid attention to _him_ in their coverage of his phony engagement to Tee, or that now no one would _shut up_ about him.  He felt like he couldn’t turn on the television without seeing a news story about his scandalous new affair, and every DJ on the radio was berating him for breaking Tee’s heart.  Even the ones who had never believed he was seriously involved with Tee were saying that.  What the fuck was their problem?  They didn’t want him engaged to her, but they didn’t want him sleeping with someone else, either?  Did they just want him not to exist at all?

            He was beginning to think that he should just say “fuck it” and publicly admit the truth.  Better to go out in a blaze of glory than keep dealing with all this shit just to hold on to what little was left of his career.

            Except that would leave Tee blowing in the wind.  And suddenly she was in danger of being illegally deported.  Emilio would kill him if that happened.  Curt _had_ promised to look after her when Emilio went back to the West Coast, after all.  There had to be some other solution, something he just wasn’t smart enough to figure out.

            He wasn’t about to ask Alicia for advice, though.  She’d just say he should give up on men and marry Tee for real.  As if that would solve anything now that it had come to this.

            But maybe Arthur had come up with something.  It had been more than 24 hours since they last spoke.  And he was a lot smarter than Curt was, or at least better at using his smarts.  Surely he’d thought of something, right?

            Curt tried calling him, but Arthur didn’t answer.  Maybe he was just in the john?  It was a little late for him to be out to lunch still, but he could be in the shower.  Just because he wasn’t answering was no reason to assume anything bad had happened to him.  His neighborhood wasn’t all that good, but it wasn’t all that bad, either.  The people there probably wouldn’t attack him or anything.

            It was starting to feel claustrophobic in the apartment.  Curt contemplated going out for a drive—those fuckers were staking out the front door of the building, but not the garage—but he’d just get pulled over by every cop car that saw him, and then…ugh.  Besides, his car had become pretty famous since he nearly killed himself with it.  Those media vultures would probably pile into their own cars and follow him.

            Rather than going out, maybe the thing to do was to get drunk so he wouldn’t notice that there wasn’t all that much to do other than fuck around with his guitar or watch TV.

            The phone started ringing while he was getting a beer out of the fridge.  Hoping it was Arthur, Curt jogged back into the TV room, beer in hand.  “Hello?”

            “Well, don’t _you_ sound hopeful,” a mocking voice said through the receiver.  “Did you expect I’d be your boyfriend?”

            “Those days are long gone, motherfucker,” Curt snarled.  “And you can drop the fucking fake accent!”

            That cold, callous laugh was a parody of Brian’s laugh—of the way he used to laugh.  “You never change.”  The voice was Brian’s proper voice now, with only a hint of Tommy Stone remaining.

            “If _you’re_ an example of what happens to a man who does change, I wouldn’t want to.”

            “You shouldn’t be like that.  You’re always so bloody ready to leap to conclusions.  I’m calling to _help_ you,” Brian claimed.  Like all his lies, it sounded all too convincing.

            “What are you talking about?”  Curt didn’t want to be foolish enough to believe anything, and yet…what if…?

            “I know a very well respected photographic expert.  He’s willing to swear those photos are doctored fakes.”

            “Really?”

            “Of course.  _If_.”  There it was.  The catch.

            “If what?”

            “Two things.  Only two little things, and I’ll save your career,” Brian promised.  “Again.”

            “What are they?” Curt asked, trying not to sound quite as suspicious as he felt.  If Brian _was_ serious, then he didn’t want to drive away the offer by being too stand-offish…

            “Don’t worry, I won’t stop you from marrying that Garcia woman.  I think she’d be good for you.”

            “That’s not what I’m worried about.”

            Brian sighed.  “Stop being so bloody paranoid, and say you’ll agree to it.”

            “I’m not agreeing to _shit_ without knowing what I’m agreeing to,” Curt replied.  It was almost a snarl, really, though he hadn’t meant for it to come out quite so vicious.

            “No need to be so suspicious,” Brian cooed at him.  It sounded like his usual blend of patronizing and sarcastic.  “I’m trying to _help_ you,” he repeated.

            “Maybe I don’t _need_ your help.”

            “And that’s why you’re hiding from the press?  Because you don’t need any help?”

            Curt sighed.  He couldn’t deny it, as much as he wanted to.  “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you if I’m willing to do it.  It was just two things, right?”

            “Three, really, but two of them are connected.”

            Curt tried to restrain his urge to growl.  Typical of Brian to change his requirements midway through a negotiation.

            “Do you need a lozenge?” Brian laughed.

            “Just get on with it, motherfucker!” Curt snapped, making Brian laugh at him again.

            “First,” Brian started, in that self-satisfied tone of his, “you have to break up with your little fan.  Some acquaintances of mine have shown me quite the file on him.  He’s a radical anti-government type, a real threat to society.”

            “Your cronies showed you the wrong file,” Curt laughed.  “Arthur’s harmless as a dove.”  It worried him that Brian had described Arthur as his ‘fan.’  Surely that file didn’t cover how they had originally met…?

            “Second,” Brian went on, utterly ignoring everything Curt had said, as usual, “you have to give that alleged charity a firm rejection.  They’re treating your reply as if you had agreed to their demands.”

            “Demands?  They just wanted me to perform at a reduced fee,” Curt sighed.  “It’s not a bad gig, and they’re trying to raise money for AIDS research.  Considering the chances that you and I are both gonna die of AIDS, you oughta _want_ them to get as much money as they can.”

            “Don’t drag me down with you,” Brian snarled.

            “Sorry, isn’t it _your_ ex-manager and lover who’s already been reduced to a fucking wheelchair by AIDS?”

            Curt could hear heavy breathing from the other end of the phone for about a minute.  “He caught it long after we parted ways,” Brian insisted.

            “For my own sake, I sure hope so,” Curt agreed.  The line fell silent again.  “Well?  What’s your third demand?”  It was a pointless question, since he’d never agree to the first one, but he wanted to know just how angry he should be.

            “I’ve talked to the scheduling people for the festival where I’ll be performing next month in Washington,” Brian told him, the Tommy Stone voice beginning to creep back in again.  “They agreed that they’ll let you take part, too, if you cut all ties with your radical reporter.  They’ll even intercede with President Reynolds and make sure he doesn’t attack your fiancée’s nationality again.”

            “Do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

            “I’m saying I want to work with you again.  Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

            “If there’s one thing I’ve _never_ wanted, it’s to become a fucking whore like you have!  You can take your photographic expert and shove him right up your sold-out ass!”  Curt slammed the receiver back down on the base, causing the ringer to jangle loudly.

            After a moment’s thought, he realized what a fucking stupid thing he had just done, and picked up the phone again, quickly dialing Tee’s number.  As it rang, he finally remembered he hadn’t opened his beer yet.  He had just popped it open as Tee picked up.  The can sprayed massive amounts of foam at him.  “Motherfucker!” he shouted.

            “You always call girls up to scream obscenities at them?” Tee asked.  “Or is that your way of trying to cheer me up?”

            “My beer just exploded in my fucking face!”

            Tee giggled.  “You drink too much, Curt.”

            “Yeah, yeah.”  He pulled off his shirt and used it to mop the beer off his face.  “Look, Tee, I think you need to hold a press conference.”

            “My manager told me not to talk to the press until he’d figured out a good way to respond to those photos.”

            “Yeah, but I just made everything worse,” Curt admitted, then quickly explained about the call with Brian—no, Tommy.

            “You’re the motherfucker,” Tee grumbled.  “Why didn’t you just paint a fucking target on all our foreheads?!”

            Curt laughed.  “Oh, are you done pretending to be a dainty lady now?”

            “Fuck you.”

            “Anyway, Tee, you’ve gotta deal with this now.  Call for a press conference.  The sooner the better; tonight if you can.  We don’t wanna give them time to act first.”

            “And just what am I supposed to say in this press conference?”

            “I guess you’ve got two choices,” Curt said, with a sigh.  “You can give them a sob story about how you were so in love with me but that I’ve left you for a man, or…”

            “Or what?”

            “Or you can tell the truth.  The pressure from the management company, your sexuality, everything.”  Curt shook his head.  “I’d recommend the first one, personally.  But make it—don’t make it cheap.  Tell them I left you for a chance to get back together with the one ex who meant more to me than Brian did.”

            “If I tell them that, for your career’s sake you’ll have to stay with him for a _long_ time,” Tee pointed out.  “Like, minimum five to ten.”

            “Do you have to make it sound like a prison sentence?”

            “Getting stuck with a man for that long sounds like a prison to me,” Tee replied.

            “Well, that’s not how it sounds to me.  Look, don’t worry about my career, okay?  It’s a lost cause now.  We gotta salvage _your_ career.  And that means pushing all the blame onto me,” Curt pointed out.  “So you have to hold your press conference before any of the fallout of that phone call can hit the media.”

            “You’re really just going to give up?”

            “I’ll hold my own press conference in reaction,” Curt assured her.  “But yours has got to be first.”

            Tee took some more convincing, but eventually accepted that Curt was right, and agreed that she’d set up her end as soon as she could.  That still left a lot to do.  But first and foremost…

            Curt put his shirt back on, ignoring the wet beer splotches, and left his apartment.  If the guy across the hall was home…

            “What is it?”  The door was only opened a crack, held back by the chain.

            “Oh, good, you’re here,” Curt said.  “I need a ride for a bit.  You’ve still got a car, right?”

            “Something wrong with yours?”

            “I tend to get pulled over.  I just need to go across town and pick someone up.”

            “Can’t they just get here by cab?”

            Curt laughed.  “Haven’t been outside today, have you?”

            “My deadline is next week, and I’m about ten thousand words short.  I’ve barely done anything but write for the past month.”

            The advantage of having a novelist live across the hall was that novelists tended to be quiet.  The disadvantage was that this particular one had no fucking clue what was going on in the world.  Ever.

            But all Curt needed to do was explain the situation.  Then he could get out past the pests at the door without anyone noticing, go pick up Arthur, and bring him safely back here, without the media knowing about it.  Clean and neat.


	25. Chapter 25

            Mary wondered if it was standard practice to have a special meeting room just for press conferences, or if there was something a bit sketchy about the Aura Management Company.  They’d only sent out the announcement about the conference an hour ago, and yet the meeting room was packed solid with reporters and television crews, despite the short notice.  Mary felt a bit sorry for Teresa Garcia having to go out in front of this pack of ravening wolves, honestly.

            That wasn’t why she’d fought so hard to be sent, though.  Normally, an understaffed paper like the _Herald_ wouldn’t have sent anyone to a press conference held by a mere musician, especially not in an election year.  But there was no question in the office of not sending anyone to this one.  Not after this scandal had already cost them one of their own.  Mary wanted to know how long it had been going on— _if_ it had been going on at all—and if finding out might also explain that fit he had suddenly thrown, all the better.

            Of course, that wasn’t exactly the reason she wanted to be here, either.  All the men in the office had wanted to cover the conference so they’d get to see Tee up close and in person.  Not one of them had said anything about Arthur, whether they wanted to see him vindicated or to see proof that he was really gay.  Mary didn’t have many doubts on the subject:  she’d never once seen him flirt with any of the girls in the office—not Lou’s secretary, not those cute delivery girls from the Chinese place down the street, nor any of the others—and the only time he’d ever talked about having a girlfriend was right after he started work there, and seemed to have a fling with Lou’s niece from California.  And despite that he was a pretty good-looking guy, she’d never seen a girl hitting on him, either.  Like girls knew he wasn’t interested, and didn’t bother.  So she was pretty sure he really was gay, though it annoyed her she hadn’t noticed until it had been pointed out by those photos.  But just because he was gay didn’t mean he was sleeping with an engaged has-been of a rock singer.  Though if he was, it would explain why he’d been acting so strangely ever since the Wild/Garcia engagement was announced.  Not to mention that the night he had said his ‘date’ had cancelled on him was the same night as the party at Teresa Garcia’s home that had started the whole alleged relationship between the two singers.

            All that had played a small role in her desire to cover the conference, but mostly she had just wanted to get back a bit of her own against those pigs.  They always acted like she wasn’t good for much around the office.  More than one person had assumed she was a fucking secretary.  One asshole had even thought she was a cleaning woman!  If this turned out to be a big story, she was going to make sure that it got printed with her picture next to the by-line.  Show the world that she wasn’t going to be stopped by racist, sexist creeps.

            The room should have fallen silent as Tee came in and took up a position at the podium down front, but instead it became more raucous as reporters started shouting questions at her.  She jumped back with a start at first, then bit her lip and waited as the questions kept pouring in.  Then she started to look annoyed when they didn’t stop, and finally she shouted “Shut up!” into the microphone.  Mary was proud of her for that.  “I have a prepared statement I want to read,” Tee said, once the crowd stopped making so much noise.  “I…I know you’ve all seen those photos of Curt and…that man.”  Her voice shook slightly as she spoke.  “I—I’ve talked to Curt a lot about what happened, and…I want you to understand that…that I…that we…”

            Tee stopped talking, her whole body trembling.  The poor girl!  Her heart was so badly broken that she couldn’t even talk about it?  Mary had never imagined Arthur to be such a home-wrecker.  Tee even looked like she was crying…

            “No,” Tee whispered.  The microphones still picked it up and made it as loud as normal speech, easily heard.  “No, I can’t—I can’t do this.”

            “Teresa, we’ve talked about this,” a stern man said from beside her.  He’d followed her in.  White guy, about fifty, wearing a slightly loud suit.  Probably her agent.  Manager.  Whatever.

            “I know we have, but I can’t do it!” Tee shouted at him, then looked back out at the press.  “I came out here to read a statement, but I don’t want to keep lying to the world.”

            “Teresa, stop it!” her manager shouted.

            “Fuck off!” Tee snapped right back.  So much for her squeaky-clean image!  “My prepared statement was to tell the world that my engagement with Curt was real,” she told the assembled reporters, “but that he had left me for the love of his life, the only ex more important to him than Brian.”

            Arthur had been involved with Curt Wild before?  When?  Or was that just another lie? ~~~~

“But I’m not going to lie to you any longer,” Tee continued.  “Our engagement was never real.”  Flashbulbs started going off so rapidly that it sounded like popcorn.  “Our managers insisted on it.  Curt’s career needed the boost, and I…they wanted to cover up the truth about  me.”

            Dozens of voices started shouting from the assembled reporters.  Mary couldn’t make out all their questions, but words like ‘illegal alien’ and ‘citizenship’ came up a lot.

            “Don’t be stupid!” Tee shrieked, silencing them.  “I was born in this country, and I don’t know why anyone would think otherwise.  My dad still works in the same hospital where I was born, and I know anyone in LA can walk right in there and find the obstetrician who delivered me, and probably some of the nurses, too.”  She shook her head.  “What my manager wanted to cover up was that I don’t…I don’t like men romantically.”

            The room erupted.  Flashbulbs, shouted questions…it was chaos.

            Mary knew she should probably be asking questions, too, but it felt pointless.  The story was all right there.  Like an old-time movie studio, the management company was running its stars’ lives, even forcing them into a loveless marriage to cover up for a lesbian singer.

            Admitting the truth was probably going to ruin the girl’s career, but Mary was proud of her for having the gumption to stand up to the old white men trying to run her life.


	26. Chapter 26

            Arthur was used to press conferences.  In his line of work, he’d been at more than a few.  But he’d only attended them as one of the myriads of reporters.  The idea of being one of the people _giving_ the conference was not something that had ever occurred to him.

            Of course, Curt told him that he wouldn’t have to say anything.  And Alicia, Curt’s manager, insisted that Arthur absolutely _mustn’t_ say anything.  He should stand quietly at the back of the room with her and the management company’s press liaison.  But if there was one thing Arthur understood, it was that there was no way of predicting how things were going to turn out.

            Arthur was more than a little daunted by the reaction when he and Curt entered the room.  Everyone started clamouring at once, snapping photos and pointing television cameras at them, even as dozens of incomprehensible questions were shouted at them all at once.  Maybe he unconsciously shirked back, because Curt squeezed his hand a bit as they approached the microphones that had been set up at the centre front of the room.  Trying to distract himself from how many people were staring at—and photographing—him, Arthur scanned the room looking for familiar faces.  He saw a lot of people he recognized from other press conferences, but no one from the _Herald_ , which rather surprised him, considering the nice piece Mary had written up about Teresa’s announcement.

            About two feet from the microphones, maybe a bit less, Alicia set a hand on Arthur’s arm, tugging him back.  Reluctantly, he let go of Curt’s hand, and let him continue on alone.  Though Curt said he hated dealing with the press, he handled them beautifully, like he had been born for it.  He had them silent and obedient within a minute of taking his place.

            “You already got the story from Tee,” he said into the microphones, “so I’m not gonna waste time repeating it.  I only agreed to it because I promised her brother that I’d look out for her, and it seemed like the best thing for her safety as well as her career.  People can be real assholes to anyone who’s different, and she’s more fragile than she realises.”  Curt shook his head.  “The important thing is that I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of.  This is perfectly natural,” he went on, gesturing towards Arthur.  “It’s the rest of the world that’s messed up, thinking there’s something wrong with us.”

            The assembled press started shouting questions as soon as Curt stopped talking.  One of the local television types pushed his way forward, making the others quiet down a bit as he shouted his question.  “Are you still using that ‘bisexual’ line, or are you finally admitting that you’re gay?”

            Curt let out a low noise that was almost a groan.  “It’s not that simple,” he said.  “I forget what it was called, but I read a book about this on the inside.”  Naturally, cameras started flashing wildly at the reminder that he had served time in prison.  “People don’t just have an on/off switch with positions for ‘straight’ and ‘gay,’ you know?  It’s more like one of those turning dials that gradually dims the lights.  If full lights on is gay and totally off is straight, people can be anywhere in the middle, yeah?  Maybe most people are the lights really dim, ‘cause they _mostly_ like only the opposite sex, but some people are the lights up pretty bright.  I’m more like that.”

            The assembled reporters didn’t really seem to see what he meant, so there wasn’t much for it.  Arthur grimaced, and walked over to Curt’s side.  “I think what he’s tryin’ to say is that he likes men and women both, but men _more_.”

            “I thought that was obvious,” Curt grumbled.

            “Are you the same way?” a voice shouted from the back of the room.

            “Me?”  Arthur found it hard to believe anyone would _care_ what his preferences were.  “Well, yes.”

            “Curt, what about your famous affair with Brian Slade?” one of the women in the audience shouted.

            “What about it?” Curt asked, a suspicious glint in his eye.

            “Since that affair ended, you’ve only very rarely had any serious romances, and none with men.  So has your new boyfriend usurped a position that used to belong to Brian Slade alone?”

            “Maybe I just can’t resist those sexy English accents,” Curt replied.

            Arthur laughed.  “Don’t say that—someone might _believe_ you!”

            Curt laughed, too, slipping his arm around Arthur’s waist.  “Sorry.  But your accent _is_ sexy,” he added.  “Look,” Curt went on, turning back to the press, “it’s not that I haven’t had relationships.  I just haven’t made a big deal about them, ‘cause I’m not a camera whore like Brian.”

            “Curt!”  What was Brian—Tommy, rather—going to do when he heard Curt call him a whore?  “Don’t drag things down with pettiness, please.”  He _had_ told Curt that he wouldn’t get that new job if they screwed this up.  Had Curt forgotten?

            Curt chuckled.  “Okay, I’ll admit that there haven’t been a lot of men since Brian,” he told the press.  “You don’t get over that kind of break-up fast or easy.  But it’s been ten years.  I think I’ve earned a reward for all my suffering.”

            “Reward?” Arthur repeated.  “Is _that_ what I am?”

            “You better believe it!” Curt laughed, before kissing him passionately.  Arthur could hear the flashbulbs going off, but he couldn’t force himself to break away from the kiss.  It felt too good.  And, deep down, a part of him hoped that maybe photos of them kissing might help other young men accept themselves the way photos of Curt and Brian had helped him.  But even having that thought made Arthur hate himself for putting on such airs.  That he would have the nerve to compare himself to Brian—to imagine that he could ever be even a quarter as important to Curt as Brian had been—shocked and disgusted him.  No matter what Brian had become since, he had been the love of Curt’s life, and Arthur knew that wasn’t going to change for someone as pathetic as he was.

            The reporters were already shouting more questions by the time they parted.  Arthur had the sudden sinking feeling that they would be there all morning.


	27. Chapter 27

            The fucking press conference felt like it had lasted for several years.  They usually did, of course.  That was one of the reasons Curt hated them.  They took forever, and someone always got mad at him if he cursed even a little bit.  It would’ve been better if they hadn’t mentioned Brian.  Maybe that was stupid of him, to think that could ever have happened, but…

            Once they were finally out of there, they went back to Curt’s place, where Curt insisted that they take a nice long shower together.  He had some ideas of what he wanted to do to relax and get rid of the stress from being grilled like that, but he wanted to make damned sure that everything he planned to put his tongue on—or in—was absolutely clean.  There were things he wanted to taste, and things he didn’t.

            Fortunately, Arthur was up for all of it.

            When they woke up after their mad sex, it was mid-afternoon, and Arthur insisted on closing himself up in the back room to work on the story he was having to write—re-write—as an audition piece for that magazine.  “It’s going to take much longer ‘cause I’m 'aving to write it by hand,” he explained.

            “So what am I supposed to do?”

            Arthur shrugged.  “I don’t know.  What do you normally do?”

            “Uh…”  Somehow, it was a lot harder to explain how he filled his time than to actually fill it.  “Watch TV…work on songs…stuff like that…”  Would now be a bad time to admit that he had also developed a taste for video games?  The Atari was still hidden in the back of the hall closet…

            “So that’s probably what you should do, then,” Arthur replied, as if that made any fucking sense.  “Actually, have you called that charity back yet?  I think at this point you ought to accept their offer, don’t you?”

            “Oh, yeah, I should,” Curt agreed.  After this morning’s press conference, they’d probably already guessed that he’d be doing it, but better to be sure.

            So while Arthur went into the back room to work on his article, Curt made a really boring phone call.  Of course, they were thrilled that he was agreeing to do it, and they immediately started begging permission to make his appearance the center of their advertising.  He told them to ask his manager about that, and gave them Alicia’s number.  Let _her_ have the headache for a while.

            With that done, he didn’t have anything to do except watch TV or read, and he didn’t feel like reading.  Didn’t really feel like watching TV, either, but Arthur was busy, so he couldn’t have sex, so what else was there?

            About five, Arthur came in and joined Curt on the couch, saying that he wanted to watch the news.  “C’mon, Arthur, you’re not working for a newspaper anymore.  You don’t have to watch the fucking news every day.”

            “Don’t you want to see what they have to say about us?” Arthur countered.

            “Only if it’s good.”  If it was bad, better to just get the summary from Alicia.

            Arthur sighed, and turned on the news anyway.

            “You owe me a blowjob if it’s bad news,” Curt grumbled.

            “Fine by me,” Arthur agreed.  “I wouldn’t mind that even if it’s good news.”

            “Okay, _that_ I like!” Curt laughed.  “You give me a blowjob every time you make me watch the news.  Two if the news is bad.”

            “That sounds a trifle excessive,” Arthur replied with a chuckle, even as he snuggled in closer against Curt’s side.

            Most of the news was about the election, of course.  Didn’t sound like Arthur’s story had had much impact on Reynolds’ campaign; even in New York, he was still polling well ahead of his strongest Republican rival, and most people still said they’d vote for him if the final election were held today.  Lousy fucking news.  What did people _like_ about that guy, anyway?  He was so fucking smarmy!  Just like his best buddy, Tommy Stone…

            As soon as the news turned to entertainment, Curt found himself at the center of the top story of the evening.  “In a surprising turn of events, popular singer Teresa Garcia last night admitted that her engagement to Curt Wild was a deception,” the anchorman said.  “Not, however, for any reasons of citizenship, but because the management company handling both singers wanted to hide that she was a lesbian.  This morning, Curt Wild, accompanied by his boyfriend, held his own press conference to confirm everything Garcia had said.”  They showed a clip of Curt and Arthur kissing, making Arthur shudder slightly, pressing up closer against Curt’s side.  All he could do was tighten the arm he had around him.  What else _could_ he do?  They were gonna keep playing that footage for a long time.  Maybe for the rest of their lives; it was _still_ standard practice to put a photo of him kissing Brian in _every single fucking article_ about him in any music magazine.  “Reactions to the two announcements have been varied,” the anchor went on.

            A series of shots of random people on the street followed.  “It’s disgusting,” one blonde woman about Arthur’s age said, holding her hands over her little son’s ears as she was talking, as if afraid he’d be contaminated just by hearing the idea _discussed_.  “The idea of two men—or two women!—acting as if they were somehow able to _love_ each other!  It’s un-Christian!  Even if I let my children listen to sinful rock music, I’d never allow them to listen to music by _people like that_.”

            “You know, I don’t see what the big deal is,” a man in his forties told the camera.  He dressed like a college professor, with a patched tweed jacket and everything.  “Homosexuality has been a part of Western culture since ancient Greece.  The church has been trying to ban it for the last two thousand years, yet it’s still around.  It doesn’t hurt anyone—as long as they practice safe sex, at any rate—so why should anyone waste their time objecting?  Neither one of those two performers makes music I enjoy, but if they did I certainly wouldn’t stop listening to it because of this.”

            “I don’t want to think about Tee being gay!” one teenage boy complained.

            “Yeah, but the idea of her sleeping with another hot chick is pretty sexy,” his friend replied.

            A man dressed as a priest said that he was urging all his parishioners to burn every copy of both Tee’s and Curt’s music.  He went on for several minutes in a bit of a sermon, giving Curt time to joke that it was fine by him if they wanted to burn every copy they could find, so long as they paid for it first.  Sales are sales.

            “I used to go weak in the knees at the thought of Curt Wild and Brian Slade being lovers,” a woman about Arthur’s age told the news crew.  “I was jealous, but it was also exciting to me.  This is no different.  I’m jealous of his new boyfriend, but if they’re happy together, isn’t that what matters?  I’ll keep buying his music, no matter who he’s dating.”

            The last shot was taken in the Village, and showed a gay couple holding hands.  “I’m glad they’ve gone public,” one of them said.  “It’s time we stopped hiding and being afraid of our own shadows.”

            “It’s like Curt said,” the other went on. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’re doing.  Everyone else is wrong to judge us.”

            “Did I say that?” Curt asked.

            Arthur laughed.  “It was only this morning.  You shouldn’t have forgotten already.  And yes, you did, though not quite in those words.”

            The news was now showing some other singers being asked what they thought.  At least one of the men being uncomfortably disapproving was secretly gay himself—last time they’d run into each other, Curt had had trouble keeping the guy off him—so it was mostly a joke of segment.

            Until they showed Tommy Stone.

            Then it stopped being funny.

            “It’s an alarming precedent,” Tommy told the camera.  “I wouldn’t want our profession to become tainted by their ilk.  There’s already an unpleasant stereotype that gay men all go into the theater.  What if that stereotype is extended to all the performative arts?  If being a rock star becomes tantamount to being suspected of being gay, then what’s a healthy, all-American man like myself to do?”

            “You lying motherfucker!” Curt shouted.

            It was all he could do to stop from destroying the television.  What the fuck had that phone call been about, if Brian wasn’t hoping to get back together with him?  Or was this the way that selfish prick handled rejection?!

 

***

 

            Trying to keep Curt’s temper under control was apparently a full-time job.  After he had blown up at the evening news last night, Arthur tried to distract Curt with everything from sex to alcohol to light-hearted movies on television, but Curt kept coming back to it and fuming at great length.  Eventually, Arthur managed to get him to drink himself into unconsciousness, but that certainly hadn’t been an ideal solution.  Anything but, really:  now he was going to have to nurse Curt through what was likely to be quite a terrible hangover.

            But while Curt was still asleep, Arthur took advantage of the momentary early morning quiet to go into the other room and make a phone call.

            “You’ve reached _Freedoms_.  This is Libby.  How can I help you?”  Didn’t she get tired of answering the phone the same way every time?

            “This is Arthur Stuart.  I need to talk to Ms. Forsyth, please.”

            “Oh, I saw you on TV yesterday!” Libby exclaimed.  “Got pretty racy there, didn’t you?”

            Arthur grimaced, trying to remind himself that he was going to be hearing a lot of that over the next six months or so.  “Please, it’s important.”

            “Okay, let me see if she’s available.  I’ll just have to put you on hold a minute.”

            He was on hold for a far shorter interval than during his initial phone call to the magazine, and this time the call was indeed put through to Ms. Forsyth.  “It’s much too early to say whether he’s made things better or worse,” she said, almost the second she picked up.

            “Yes, I guessed that much already,” Arthur agreed.

            “Then what are you calling about?  You can’t be asking for an extension.”

            “No, ma—Ms. Forsyth,” Arthur replied, catching himself almost too late in his instinct to address a woman in a position of authority as ‘ma’am’.  “The story’s already all but finished.  I was hopin’ you’d approve of my writin’ another article as well.”

            “Oh?  Did you have something in mind?”

            “Yes.  I was thinkin’ I’d call it ‘The Treachery of Brian Slade.’”

            Ms. Forsyth sighed.  “Ten years too late.”

            “No, it’s not about the shooting stunt.”

            “Then what _is_ it about?” Ms. Forsyth asked suspiciously.

            “Actually, it complements the other article nicely,” Arthur told her.  “It’s about how the former icon of bisexuality has become the pawn of a homophobic politician.  No, maybe ‘willing tool’ would be more accurate than ‘pawn,’ really.”

            There was silence on the other end of the line.

            “Ms. Forsyth?”

            “I thought no one had heard from Slade in years.”

            “He was on the news just last night,” Arthur assured her, “just not under that name.”

            “Can you prove that?”

            “All the name change files have been locked, so I can’t give official proof, but I can get testimony from people who knew him.”

            “Let me rephrase that question, then,” Ms. Forsyth said coldly.  “Can you prove it _without_ depending on your boyfriend?”

            “Is there some problem with Curt’s testimony?”

            “He’s a bitter ex-boyfriend.  Anything he says against Slade is automatically going to be discounted by anyone who’s looking for an excuse to dismiss the story.  Especially when the story is written by his _new_ boyfriend.  And if it also happens to be denigrating one of his current career rivals?  I am _not_ opening up my magazine to the fully justified attacks that would lead to.”

            “I understand,” Arthur said, withholding a sigh.  “I’m sure I can get proof without needing to use Curt as a source.”

            “All right.  _If_ you can get the story written without citing your boyfriend, and _if_ you can get both it and the other article ready by the deadline, I’ll accept it.”

            “I can’t promise they’ll both be perfect, with that deadline.”  That wasn’t very long to research _and_ write a piece of that complexity.  Not when his most accessible—and willing—source was ruled out.

            “This new one can still be a rough, as long as it’s complete.”

            Arthur assured her that would be no problem, and hung up the phone.

            He headed into the kitchen and started making a late breakfast.  Curt should get up soon, whether he wanted to keep sleeping or not.  And once he was awake and feeling fully sensible, he could call Mandy and set up a new interview, one without any government enforcers eavesdropping from behind a bar…


	28. Chapter 28

            Given everything that was going on, it struck Mandy as decidedly bizarre that Curt was insisting on her coming over for lunch.  She was still trying to figure out how—and why—Curt would have ended up seeing that latest reporter who had come looking for Brian.  He was attractive, yes, but not attractive enough to be worth the risk.  Something just felt _off_ about the whole thing.  Like maybe he had been some kind of plant, testing her, or testing the babysitters who watched over her every time she came anywhere near the press.  If that was the case, what had Curt gotten himself into?

            Maybe it was innocent.  She’d been trying to tell herself that ever since those photos appeared in that tabloid.  After all, the guy _had_ seemed strangely interested in just which concert of Curt’s she had seen Brian at.  She’d written it off at the time, since he was English and about the right age to have been interested in Curt’s music back then.  Maybe he’d been more interested in Curt than in his music?

            Or maybe Curt had been lured into something particularly insidious, and now he was getting her tangled up in it, too.

            If that was the case, there wasn’t really anything she could do about it.  If Reynolds—or whoever was covering up for Brian—was _that_ determined to entrap her, was there even any point in fighting it?  She’d been a good little girl all this time.  No point in changing now.  So long as she did as she was told, they’d leave her alone.  Most of the time, anyway.  It was better than nothing.

            But not by much.

            One way or the other, something needed to change.  She couldn’t live on scotch and cigarettes her whole life, and that was about all she was consuming lately.  Too nervous to eat.  Or sleep.  Or even relax.

            Well, if it _was_ some kind of entrapment scheme, then surely those photos were staged, and if that was the case that reporter wouldn’t show up at Curt’s place until he was needed.  So since Mandy was expected a bit before noon, she’d show up an hour or two earlier.  If he was already there, she could just say she wanted to catch up with Curt, since she hadn’t really seen him in a few years.  It was plausible enough.

            Her plan started to feel a bit shaky as she was actually knocking on Curt’s door at ten in the morning, though.  Or maybe that was just her hand that was shaking.

            The door was soon opened, not by Curt, but by the reporter.  He looked surprised to see her, but he couldn't be as surprised as _she_ was.  “Ms. Slade?  You’re—um—you’re early…”

            “I didn’t have anything better to do, and I haven’t seen Curt in while, so I thought now was as good a time as any,” Mandy said, spilling out her excuse a bit more rapidly—and incoherently—than she had meant to.  “Aren’t you going to let me in?” she added, when he didn’t move.

            “Oh!  Sorry!”  Looking more sheepish than Mandy would have expected, the man stepped aside so she could enter the apartment.

            “Where’s Curt?” Mandy asked, when a quick glance around revealed that he wasn’t at his usual spot on the sofa.  He practically lived on that sofa, as far as she could tell.

            “He went out about ten minutes ago,” the reporter said, closing the door again.  “Wouldn’t tell me where he was goin’.  Said he wanted it to be a surprise.”

            Mandy grimaced.  Curt’s surprises were usually bad news, no matter how he intended them to be.  “When is he coming back?”

            “Search me,” the man sighed.  “I was hopin’ he’d be back already.  Uh…d’you want to…can I get you anything?”  He looked earnest about it.  Awkward as hell, but earnest.

            “No, I’m fine.”  Mandy looked at him with what she hoped was a stern and piercing gaze.  “Do you know what Curt wanted to talk to me about?”

            “Ah…actually, I’m the one who wanted to talk to you, Ms. Slade,” he admitted.

            “If you’re really sleeping with Curt, you can just call me Mandy.”

            Was he blushing?

            “So what is it _you_ wanted to talk to me about?” Mandy prompted.

            He smiled sheepishly.  “Same thing as before, really.  But without the audience listenin’ in.”  He’d noticed that?  Sharper than expected.  If he was on the level about any of this.  “Oh, but I already know where—who—he is.  I just need proof.”

            Mandy sighed heavily.  “Do you know what they’re going to do to me if I give you that proof?”

            “Tell me.”  He fixed her with a steadfast gaze that Mandy didn’t really feel she could meet.

            “I can’t be sure, actually.  The threats change with each incident.  Prison, usually.  Sometimes bodily harm…but I suppose being railroaded is the normal threat.  Framed for treason, that kind of thing.”

            “Treason’s a lot more than just prison.”

            “So you understand why I don’t want to talk about it then, don’t you?”

            He bit his lip for a moment, nodding.  “At least listen to my reasons, please.”

            “I suppose that much is safe.”

            “D’you mind if we sit down somewhere?”

            Mandy chuckled, and shook her head.  Sitting down was definitely better on her neck than trying to look up at this guy.  Back at the bar, he’d been bending forward so his head wasn’t much higher than hers.  That had made talking to him a lot easier.

            They headed into the dining room, and took seats at the table.  It seemed cleaner than usual.  Either this guy was cleaning up after Curt, or Curt had suddenly learned how to take care of himself.

            “Before we get started, I have some questions I want to ask _you_ ,” Mandy said, finding him a lot less threatening now that he wasn’t standing up.

            One eyebrow arched up for a moment.  “Go ahead.”

            “First, back—”  Mandy stopped almost as soon as she started, then smiled uncomfortably.  “Sorry, I forgot your name,” she admitted.

            “It’s Arthur,” he told her, with a chuckle.

            “Right, Arthur.  So back in the bar, when we were talking before, you got very interested when I mentioned seeing Brian at one of Curt’s concerts.  Why?”

            Arthur laughed.  “Because you were wrong.  You weren’t the only one who saw him there.  But I’d never been completely sure it was him, that I hadn’t imagined it.  Or hallucinated it, given what I was on.”  His smile faded sharply.  “You 'aven’t ever told Curt that you lied about Brian being there, 'ave you?”

            “What…?!  What are you talking about?!  When did I say anything about lying to Curt?”

            He smiled uncomfortably.  “You didn’t say anything about it.”

            Mandy stared at him, trying to figure out what he knew—what he thought he knew.  But he was just sitting there, smiling at her, an uncomfortable, almost meek expression on his face above the smile.  Clearly, trying to read his face was fucking useless.  Mandy tried replaying that evening ten years ago in her head.  She had come in while Curt was making an ass of himself during the guitar solo, seen Brian standing there, watched him leave, and then gone backstage to talk to Curt.  They didn’t say much because some kid was…some teenage boy was…!

            “You little shit!” Mandy exclaimed, getting to her feet.

            Arthur laughed.  “Sorry, maybe I should 'ave said something sooner?”

            “What did you do, beg to do that story?”

            “Actually, I didn’t want to take it at all.  It…it’s complicated.”

            “Oh, do tell.”

            “I will, but…only  if you promise you won’t tell Curt that Brian was there that night.  I didn’t tell him either…and I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out.”

            “Why…”  Wait, Curt had looked at the eavesdropping little brat a lot longer than Mandy had, hadn’t he?  “Don’t tell me he found you later that night and fucked you.”

            Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “That…that makes it sound terrible.  It wasn’t; it was beautiful.”

            Mandy sighed deeply, and sat down again.  “You’re just as fucked up as the rest of us, aren’t you?”

            “Probably.”

            Good answer.  “All right, so explain yourself.”

            “Explain…everything?”

            “I’ve got time,” Mandy reminded him.

            Arthur seemed a bit reluctant about it, but soon enough he was telling his tale, though Mandy suspected it was a highly truncated one.  How he had ended up being given the assignment against his will, how he had realized the truth thanks to the continued presence of Brian’s ever-faithful Shannon, and how little that had accomplished, due to the interference of Tommy Stone’s protectors.  The story of how he had ended up being involved with Curt went beyond truncated.  “I went lookin’ for him, and he remembered me,” was all he said on _that_ subject.  But that hadn’t been the part she really wanted to know, so she let it slide.  As to his reasons why he needed the proof that Brian Slade had become Tommy Stone…

            “I’m just not convinced,” Mandy said, when he finished his story.  “What possible protection can you offer against them?”

            “I can’t,” Arthur admitted.  “But they’re not watchin' right now—they’re not watchin' my new employer at all.”

            “If they have any idea you’ve figured out the truth, they’ll be watching any place that hires you, period.”

            “But they haven’t officially hired me yet,” Arthur reminded her.  “And since it’s a magazine that caters to such a small minority, I don’t think they’d see it as any threat.”

            “I don’t know…”

            “If you want, you can leave the country on holiday when the magazine’s scheduled for release.  Then if things look bad, you can just stay away.”

            “Away where?” Mandy countered.  “What country is far enough to get out of their grasp?  Canada’s much too close, and England’s prime minister is hand-in-glove with Reynolds!  And I don’t speak any other languages, so I can’t go to South America.”

            Arthur shrugged.  “I think you’re overreactin’.”

            “I don’t.”

            They were still arguing about it when Curt returned to the apartment.  He looked surprised when Mandy came charging up to him.  “Your boyfriend is going to get us all killed!” she insisted, pointing back at the idiot.

            “What…what’s going on?”  Curt was confused.  What a surprise.  “Why are you even here yet?  I thought you weren’t coming until lunchtime.”

            “I came early.”

            “Yeah, I can see that.”

            “I guess my bein’ with you seemed suspicious to her,” Arthur contributed as he joined them in the hall.  “Under the circumstances, can’t really blame her.”

            Curt sighed heavily and shook his head.  Naturally he wouldn’t approve of other people wanting to be cautious:  he had no idea what caution even _was_.

            “Just where did you go, anyway?” Mandy asked, looking Curt over.  When Arthur said Curt had gone out for a ‘surprise,’ she had assumed he was going to buy something no one else would approve of.  Being Curt, that probably meant either porn or booze, since he wasn’t doing drugs anymore…

            Curt laughed.  “Oh, I was just sending a little message to our ex.”

            “What the fuck did you _do_?!”

            “Calm down!  I didn’t sign my name to it!”

            “If it came from you, Brian won’t need your name on it to realize where it came from,” Mandy pointed out, trying desperately not to lose her temper.

            “Yeah, but he can’t prove it, so who cares?”

            “Curt…I think you should tell us what you’ve done,” Arthur said, frowning.  Well, at least he had a bit of a backbone.

            Curt sighed miserably, and didn’t say a word until he’d gone into the kitchen and gotten a beer first.  He leaned back against the counter and took a long gulp before starting his explanation.  “They were running a commercial on TV,” he said.  “About how ‘Tommy Stone’ was going to be on Harry Spooner tonight.  So I thought I’d send him a special little bouquet there.”

            “Why?” Arthur asked.  “And why would that take so long?”

            Curt laughed.  “I had to go look something up at the library first.”

            “Oh, you can read?” Mandy teased.  “When did that happen?”

            “What did you ‘ave to look up at the library?” Arthur asked.

            “What flowers to send.”  Curt pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and looked at it.  “The bouquet was geraniums, fox glove, meadowsweet, yellow carnations and orange lilies.”

            “Sounds hideous,” Mandy said, shaking her head.  “But I don’t see the point of it.”

            “When my mom wasn’t torturing me, she worked in a flower shop,” Curt explained.  “Flowers all mean something, and she used to bitch about customers wanting to send flowers that weren’t appropriate—like red roses for a funeral or some shit.  But it works both ways.  You can pick flowers with inappropriate meanings on purpose to send a different meaning.  So I looked through a book on the meanings of flowers.  I don’t remember what they all meant now, but put ‘em together and they basically mean ‘fuck you.’”

            Mandy laughed.  That was so typically Curt.

            “I’m not sure that was a good idea,” Arthur sighed.  “What if someone knows what the flowers mean?”

            “That’s sorta the idea.”

            “Brian will know there’s a meaning behind a bouquet that weird-looking,” Mandy said, nodding.  “I doubt he knows what the flowers mean, but he’ll look them up.  And once he does, he’ll know it had to come from you.  Especially if you ever told him about your mother being a florist.”

            “She wasn't a proper florist; she just worked the register in the shop,” Curt said, shaking his head.  “And him knowing it came from me without being able to prove it is the whole point.”

            “Give me some of that beer,” Mandy sighed.  If she was going to deal with this shit, she needed to be drunk.  Or at least less sober than she currently was.

            “Get your own.”

            Mandy opened the refrigerator with a bit of trepidation.  She knew what Curt normally kept in his fridge:  month old leftovers that were visibly moldy, and at least two dozen beers.  Surprisingly, the moldy food was now gone, replaced with fresh leftovers, and even some actual food.  Was that Arthur’s doing, or was Curt ashamed by the idea of his much younger boyfriend seeing how he normally lived?

            Regardless, she took out a beer, opened it, and chugged about half of it before fixing Curt with a stern look.  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

            “I told Brian what I think of his bullshit.”

            “You’ve declared _war_.”

            Curt laughed.  Why did he have to take serious things so lightly, and take seriously things that were inconsequential?  It’d be one thing if he didn’t take anything seriously, but only the meaningless things?

            “What do you think he’ll do?” Arthur asked, looking very worried.  At least _one_ of them had the sense to be concerned!

            “He’ll throw a fit in private, and then put on that phony American accent and bitch about me in public again,” Curt said.  “He doesn’t know how to do anything else to get back at someone other than to complain about them.”

            “Naïve idiot,” Mandy grumbled, chugging the rest of her beer.  “Believe me, Brian’s capable of much worse than a little complaining.  And anything he can’t handle, between Shannon and his new friends in high places…”  She shook her head.  “I guess we have to strike first, before he can plan out his revenge.”

            “Strike first?  What is this, a coup?” Curt laughed.

            “Fuck you.”  Mandy turned to look at Arthur.  “I guess I’ll be giving you that interview after all.”

            “Er, yes, but…the magazine doesn’t ship until the first of the month.  That’s hardly strikin’ first, not unless he’s quite slow about his revenge.”  Arthur frowned a moment.  “What kind of revenge do you think he’d take?”

            Mandy shrugged.  “For an insulting flower bouquet?  Probably not much.  At first.  But when his first attempt or two didn’t garner any results, he’d get worse.  Hand it over to Shannon, or to those guys who’ve been safeguarding his secret.”

            “So we’d have some time before it would get bad,” Arthur concluded.  “That’s fine, then.  But we’ll want more proof than just your word.”  He paused a moment, then smiled.  “And I think I’ve got just the way to get it.  Let me just make a call real quick,” he added, then kissed Curt, and went over to the phone.

            Mandy watched uncertainly as he dialed the phone.  Who did he think was going to help him now?  There weren’t many people who knew the truth of Brian’s new identity, and most of the ones who weren’t on Brian’s side were in that room already.

            “Hi, yeah, can I talk to Brad, please?” Arthur said into the phone.  “It’s urgent.  Yes, I’ll hold.”

            “Who’s Brad?” Mandy whispered to Curt.

            Curt shrugged.  From the intense stare he was aiming at Arthur, he was probably jealous.  Some people just never change…

            “Brad, it’s me.”  In Arthur’s pause, Mandy could hear someone talking loudly on the other end of the line, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying.  “Yeah, look—no—Brad, shut up!  This is important!  I heard Tommy Stone will be on the show tonight?  Uh-huh…I see…good, so I 'ave something I need you to do for me.  God, no!  Look, you must’ve heard what he said about Curt last night on the news, right?”  Arthur laughed at what the person on the other of the line said.  “Exactly.  And you can help us get that payback.”  He grinned.  “It’s pretty easy, really.  Despite what he was sayin’ last night, Tommy Stone is actually bisexual, or he used to be.  So you just have to flirt with him until he flirts back.  Really pour it on.  You can be a charmer when you want to be.  I don’t think he’ll be able to resist too long.”  Arthur listened to the man on the other end for a moment, then shook his head.  “No, I wouldn’t ask you to go that far.  Just get him to show that he’s interested.  If you can get it on film somehow, or get a witness to it, that’d be great, but even if you can’t, it’s okay.”

            Arthur kept talking to the man on the other end of the phone for a few minutes, then hung up, and looked back at them.  “I think that’ll do the job,” he said.  From the smile on his face, he was very proud of himself.

            “One problem,” Curt sighed.  “That ex of yours is fucking ugly.  No way is Brian gonna drop his disguise to make a pass at _that_.”

            “He’s not _ugly_ ,” Arthur insisted.  “He’s not—he’s not as sexy as you are, but…he’s still not ugly.”

            “I still don’t think Brian’s gonna fall for _that_ bait.”

            “We—we can worry about that after we find out how it goes,” Arthur said, his voice trembling a little.  “If Brad can’t draw him out, then we’ll still 'ave time to come up with something else.”

            “It’s not always about looks with Brian,” Mandy added.  He had, after all, gone to bed with Cecil.  Who was a nice guy, but not a good-looking one.  “If he likes the man’s vibes, he might do something stupid.  Depends if your friend can get around him when Shannon isn’t there to interfere, though.”

            Arthur chuckled.  “Brad’s pretty good at creatin’ opportunities to be alone with people.  Don’t worry about that.  But I’ll still need your story.”

            Mandy sighed.  She’d have preferred to get out of this.  “All right, but I’m not telling you all that over again!”

            “No need,” Arthur agreed.  “Just start when—when he became Tommy Stone.”

            Mandy frowned.  “I wasn’t there for that, of course.  After I left him, I only stayed in England for a few more months.  It didn’t feel right being there anymore.”  She shook her head.  “At first, everything was normal enough.  I developed a bit of a career of my own.  Nothing special, but enough to pay the bills.  Everything was going fine until 1980, the first time I heard a Tommy Stone song on the radio.  I recognized that voice right away.”

            “Yeah,” Curt said, with a grimace.  “Brian used to poke fun at American music.  He had this way of singing in an American accent.  It wasn’t just the accent, it was a totally different voice.”

            “The Tommy Stone voice,” Arthur concluded.

            “Exactly.”  Mandy frowned.  “I didn’t want to believe it.  I went to the record store and looked at the album cover.  The face was wrong…but not wrong enough.  I wasn’t sure what to think, until he gave a live performance a few months later.”

            Mandy hadn’t wanted to attend the performance—Brian or not Brian, the music wasn’t to her liking—but she had gone around to the stage door after the show was over.  She knew well enough from her days traveling with Brian just when the performers would be getting ready to leave.  So she had gone to wait by the stage door, planning on ambushing him when he left.  But some security guards had seen her, and started hassling her.  She might have ended up in a lot of trouble if the proof she had been waiting for hadn’t come walking up from inside the building.

            “It’s all right,” the all-too-familiar voice had said.  “You can let her in.”

            As the guards stepped aside, Mandy had found herself staring right at Shannon Hazelbourne.  In a nice, business-like suit, with a very conservative hairstyle, but still with that air of smug self-righteousness she had developed in the last six months or so of Brian’s career.  The air that had made her think she had the right to try to remove Mandy from Brian’s presence, before he had even signed the divorce papers.

            “So it’s true,” had been all Mandy could say to her.

            “He’s been expecting you,” Shannon had said, with a small, calculated smile.  “Come with me.”

            Mandy had followed her—what else could she have done?—and been led into the dressing room where ‘Tommy Stone’ was removing his stage make-up and otherwise unwinding after the performance.  When he saw Mandy, he had smiled at her.  It wasn’t quite warm, it wasn’t quite cold, it wasn’t quite embarrassed, it wasn’t quite self-assured; a complex panoply of emotions had inhabited that smile, but the only thing Mandy had really been aware of at that moment was that it was definitely Brian’s smile.

            “What the fuck have you done to yourself?”  Mandy hadn’t wanted to get any closer to him, though it looked like that was hurting Brian’s feelings:  he had probably expected her to rush into his arms, begging him to take her back again.  “Drugs?  Plastic surgery?  How did you so completely change your face?  And _why_?  Why would you start a new career when you already had one?!”

            “I’m glad to see you, too, Mandy,” Brian had said, that cold, snippish tone he had always used when he didn’t want to admit that his feelings were hurt.  “What choice did I have?  No one wanted to hear from Brian Slade again.”

            “That’s your own fault.”

            “Was it necessary for my career to end because I made one mistake?”

            “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you now?”  She had been more inclined to scratch his eyes out.  If he’d been wearing that green pin he used to prize so much, she’d probably have pulled it right off and started stabbing him with it.  “You brought every one of your problems on yourself.  If you had any decency, you’d have owned up to it all—apologized and asked people to accept you for what you are, instead of becoming something else!”

            “No one was going to forgive me.  It made more sense to start over.”

            “How can anyone be so _selfish_?  Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?!”

            Shannon had stepped between them then, with a protective look on her face.  But Brian hadn’t needed to be protected:  he looked like he was about to leap to the attack.  If Shannon had protected anyone, it had been Mandy.  After a minute or two, Brian had calmed back down, gone into a prepared speech about how they couldn’t be seen together, lest anyone guess his secret.  Had he really thought Mandy would want to take him back?  It was appalling even to imagine it…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About Curt's flower bouquet: my co-worker found the "fuck you" flower arrangement online somewhere (I think she said it was on tumblr, but I'm not sure) and as soon as I heard her talking about it, I just *had* to find a use for it somewhere! So I just wanted to admit that I didn't look up the meanings for those flowers (in fact, I'd never have thought of it in the first place) and just borrowed it from somewhere in the anonymous depths of the Internet.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter contains dialog discussing an assumed (m/m) rape. I didn't want to tag the whole work "Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-Con", because it's only this one chapter, and about two or three mild references in the following chapter. If this subject matter will cause you any distress, please skip over this chapter; you should be able to pick up most of what you missed from context in the following chapters. (If not, please ask for details to fill in the blanks.)
> 
> In fact, actually, I'm going to post the following chapter right away, and I'll put end notes on it to sum up what's in this chapter, so if you need to, you can skip this one without missing any of the story.

            Arthur knocked on Lloyd’s door, hoping it wasn’t too early.  After what had happened last night, the story needed the best attention it could get, and that included the work of a professional photographer.

            Lloyd looked understandably confused when he opened the door, and didn’t even seem to know what to say.

            “I need your help for my story,” Arthur told him.  “Are you busy?”

            “Oh, no, I can—just give me a minute to get ready.”

            Arthur nodded.  “I’ll be in my flat, packin’ up a few extra things.  Come by when you’re ready.”  Between one thing and another, he was likely to be staying with Curt for quite a while longer, and running back and forth between his own flat and Curt’s wasn’t terribly efficient.

            He hadn’t stuffed much into his little bag before Lloyd came to his open door, with a big bag of photographic equipment over his shoulder.  “Where are we going?” Lloyd asked.

            “The set of _Talk to Harry_ ,” Arthur sighed, again cursing himself for having inadvertently set the events in motion.

            “Did something happen?”

            “Y-yeah…”  Somewhat reluctantly, as they walked to the subway station Arthur explained what he had asked of Brad, and how it had turned out.  “Brad didn’t sound upset on the phone, but…I think he was just puttin’ on an act.  Tryin’ to keep me from feelin’ guilty.”

            “Is there any chance he was joking about what happened?” Lloyd asked.

            Arthur frowned.  The thought _had_ occurred to him, but it seemed rather extreme, even for Brad’s pernicious sense of humour.  “I think if it'd been a joke, he’d 'ave stopped me from bringin’ you to get photos.”

            They had to change the subject when they got to the station.  Lloyd tried asking Arthur how he knew Brad, but that was no better a subject to discuss in public—possibly an even worse one, in fact—so they were soon discussing Ms. Forsyth, and what she was like as an editor.  The main advice Lloyd had was “Just keep in mind that she doesn’t like _anyone_.  So there’s no point in trying to get on her good side.  She doesn’t have one.  Best to toe the line and not piss her off any more than your existence does.”

            “Is it because…because we’re men?”

            “Nah, she doesn’t treat female staff any better,” Lloyd assured him, with a light laugh.  “Possibly a little worse.  She simply hates the human race.”

            Arthur wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that, aside from taking it as a good reason to tread lightly in her presence.  Since he tended to do that around authority figures anyway, it didn’t change much for him.

            When they arrived at the television studio, Arthur found Brad outside the usual entrance, smoking a cigarette.  That was already a warning sign:  Brad had given up smoking years ago, and only returned to the habit when he was feeling particularly stressed.

            “You didn’t have to rush over here,” Brad said, grinding his cigarette underfoot.  “The camera’s not going anywhere.”

            “You really got it on film?” Arthur asked, astonished.

            “Sort of.  C’mon, I’ll explain inside.”  Brad led them in through the tangled backstage mess, and into the same dressing room Curt had used only a few weeks earlier.  Returning to it under these circumstances made something inside Arthur ache.

            “Is this where it happened?” Lloyd asked, looking around curiously.

            Brad nodded.  “I hid the camera over here.”  He pushed aside the fronds on the fake fern in the corner, and removed an ordinary still camera, with a cord dangling down from it.  “It’s got a shutter remote I used to take the pictures.  Can’t guarantee any of them are any good, though.”

            “Is it your camera, or the station’s?” Arthur asked.

            “It’s mine,” Brad said, leering at him.  “Same one I used to take those pictures of us in—”

            “You said they didn’t turn out!” Arthur yelped.

            Brad laughed hysterically.  “Well, they didn’t turn out the way I wanted ‘em to…”

            “Brad…”

            “I thought maybe your new boyfriend might like to buy ‘em,” Brad chuckled.

            “Curt would kill you if he saw those,” Arthur assured him.  “He _was_ raised by wolves, remember.  Sometimes he reverts to his feral origins.”

            Brad sighed.  “Maybe the press would like them, then.”

            “Don’t even think about it.”

            He laughed again.

            “Brad…you’re not actin’ like…”  Arthur bit back the words.  They were too insensitive.  Still…he really wasn’t acting like any kind of victim.  Surely even Brad wouldn't act like his usual self after suffering a sexual assault...  “Maybe you’d better walk us through exactly what happened last night.  For the record.”

            Brad nodded, leaning his side against the doorframe that led into the shower.  “After the show was over, I came to the door and told Tommy Stone’s manager that Andy, the production assistant, wanted to talk to her about something important.  I knew that’d keep her out all night, ‘cause everyone always assumes Andy’s a guy’s name.  Plus Andy didn’t actually want to talk to her, and Andy reads you the riot act if you waste her time.”  He chuckled.  “So then I came in and started talking to Tommy.  He didn’t seem to want me there, so I was floundering right away.  Had to think fast.”

            “Oh God…tell me you didn’t say what I think you said,” Arthur said, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach.

            “Yeah, I did.  I told him how this was the same dressing room Curt Wild used when he was on the show,” Brad laughed.  “That got his ears pricking up, so I went with it as far as I could.  How I let you in here so Curt could fuck you—”

            “Brad, have you ever even _heard_ of discretion?!”

            “He was eating it up!”

            Arthur fought hard not to shout an explanation that ‘Tommy Stone’ had been so interested in Curt’s sex life because he used to be part of it.  “Just ‘ow much did you tell ‘im about me?”

            “What are you so fucking nervous about?”

            “Who said I’m nervous?”

            “Your accent’s suddenly thick as pea soup,” Brad said, chuckling.

            “It’s not.”

            “It _is_ a lot thicker than usual,” Lloyd insisted.

            Arthur grimaced, but what could he say?  He _did_ have a tendency to lose what little control he had over his accent whenever he got nervous or upset…

            “Anyway, I might have mentioned you were my ex-boyfriend,” Brad said, shrugging.  “I’m honestly not sure if I actually said it or not.  He seemed a little _too_ curious about you; it was kind of unsettling.”

            “Of _course_ he was bloody curious!” Arthur snapped.  “He used to date Curt!”

            Both the other men stared at him.

            “When…when was that?” Lloyd asked, sounding a bit timid.

            “I…I shouldn’t say right now,” Arthur said, wincing.  “Not here.”  He tried to smile, but it probably fell flat.  “But you’ll be able to read about it in my article.”

            They both stared at him, looking a bit disappointed.  More so in Brad’s case than in Lloyd’s.

            “Well, anyway, when I started running out of stuff to say about you and Curt, that’s when I started making my moves on him,” Brad went on, with a shrug.  “At first, he just looked appalled, same as any straight guy would.  But the more I poured it on, the more he started looking like he was fighting not to admit he was interested.”  Brad frowned, then sighed heavily.  “I’m not sure what I should have done differently…”

            “If it’s too hard to talk about it…” Arthur started, but how could he realistically offer to let Brad skip telling him the full story?  That would hurt his article considerably.  Unless the photos turned out to be perfect.

            “No, it’s not that,” Brad said with a chuckle.  “Believe me, I’ve been through worse nights.”  He shook his head.  “It’s just that I couldn’t get him to give in and react without going the whole hog.”

            “The whole hog?” Lloyd repeated.

            “You didn’t…”  If he'd really done _that_ , it was hard to blame Tommy for anything that he might have done...

            “Yeah, I did.  I didn’t have any choice!” Brad insisted, then turned to look at Lloyd.  “I’ve got this thing I do to turn a guy on.  Usually, I only use it on a boyfriend who’s acting hard to get.”

            “Brad, there’s a difference between playin’ hard to get and insistin’ on bein’ a responsible adult,” Arthur sighed.  How often had Brad pulled that on him because he’d wanted to keep working on a story instead of joining Brad in bed?

            Brad shrugged.  “Semantics,” he insisted.  “Anyway, let me demonstrate…”

            “Don’t even think about it!” Arthur shouted, hastily taking shelter behind the chair at the dressing table.  He was quite sure it wouldn’t affect him now the way it used to, but Curt would still be furious if he found out, regardless of Arthur’s reaction.

            “You’re even more high-strung than you used to be,” Brad laughed.

            “Can’t ‘ave anything to do with ‘aving compromisin’ pictures of me printed in the paper,” Arthur grumbled.

            Brad found that funny.  He would.  “Then how about you?  Will you let me demonstrate on you?” he asked Lloyd.

            “Sure.”

            Arthur didn’t much fancy the idea of watching Brad use his little temptress act on poor, innocent Lloyd.  But he did glance over enough to catch the part where Brad was rubbing his arse up against Lloyd’s crotch.

            “I think he gets the idea, Brad,” Arthur sighed.  Not that Lloyd looked like he wasn’t enjoying it, but his enjoying it was actually an even bigger problem, since they still had to ride the subway back again.  “Just get on with the story.”  Suddenly, Arthur didn’t feel sorry for Brad in the least.

            Brad sighed.  “Well, then it got…I don’t know quite how to put it.  It started moving too fast for me to keep up.  I mean, one minute I was just going through my little shtick, and the next minute my pants were down around my ankles and Tommy was fucking me.”

            “He raped you?” Lloyd asked, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

            Brad shook his head.  “I wouldn’t mind if he’d just taken the time to use some fucking lubricant.”  He shrugged.  “At least he used a condom, so it was a bit slick that way, but…my ass still hurts like hell.”

            “I can’t believe he’d do that…” Lloyd muttered.

            That had been how Arthur had taken the news this morning.  But that was before he had known just how far Brad had gone to provoke the man.  “I’m surprised he goes about with condoms on him.  Or was it in your pocket?”

            “Wasn’t one of mine,” Brad insisted.  “Anyway, I did manage to step on the camera trigger while it was going on, so there might be some decent pictures in here,” he said, lifting the camera.  “Or there might just be a white blur.”

            “If you’ll let me develop the film, I’ll do everything I can to get the pictures to turn out,” Lloyd promised.

            Brad handed over the camera, then looked back at Arthur.  “The really weird part was afterwards.”

            “Afterwards?”

            “As he was zipping up again, he thanked me, but he sounded funny.  Like his voice was a bit higher in pitch, and he almost sounded English.”

            He had spoken in his real voice?  “Can you tell me exactly what he said, and how he said it?” Arthur asked eagerly.  Brad had been able to mimic Arthur’s accent well enough once to fool some visiting Londoners into thinking that he, too, had come from Manchester.

            “He said ‘Thanks, mate.  It’s been too bloody long since I did that.’  See what I mean?  Sounded all English.”

            Arthur had chills.  That was Brian’s native Birmingham accent all right.  Even the inflection sounded like Brian’s.

            “Arthur?  You okay?”  Brad’s voice jolted him slightly.

            “Y-yeah, I’m fine.”  Arthur sighed.  “How much of what you’ve told us are you okay with me printin’ in my story?”

            “Hey, everyone I work with already knows I’m gay.  I’ve got no reason to care.  Print it all.”

            “Have you called the police yet?” Lloyd asked.

            “What for?”

            “To report that he raped you.”

            “There is no fucking way I’d report that, even if that _was_ the right word for it,” Brad insisted.

            “What word _would_ you use, then?” Lloyd demanded.

            Brad shrugged.  “I don’t know.  But if I’d tried to fight it, I’m sure I could have stopped him.”

            “So he took you by surprise.  That doesn’t mean it wasn’t rape.”

            “No, but that’s not—”

            Arthur cleared his throat.  This lengthy discussion of whether or not Brian had just become a rapist was unsettling him a lot more than he would have expected, especially since he had come into the building thinking that was exactly what had happened.  “This is probably not the right time to have this discussion,” he said.  “I’m sure the staff will want us out of here soon.”

            Brad nodded.  “Anyway, go ahead and print it all.  I don’t care.”

            Arthur nodded, then looked at Lloyd.  “Can you get some general photos of the room?  And maybe one or two pictures of Brad, in case none of his pictures of the act turn out.”

            Lloyd nodded.  Arthur and Brad stepped out into the hall to get out of the way of the photos.  While they were in the hall, Brad leaned in to whisper into Arthur’s ear.  “Who is he?  He’s _hot_.”

            “Who, Lloyd?  His flat is down the hall from mine, and he got me my new job at the same magazine where he works.”

            “Give me his phone number, and we’ll be even,” Brad insisted.

            Arthur chuckled.  “I don’t ‘ave his number, but I’ll ‘ave him call you later.  Then you can get his number for yourself.”  He fixed Brad with a serious look.  "But tell me the truth.  You were actually _tryin'_ to take it all the way, weren't you?"

            "Innocent little me?" Brad asked, his eyes widening in ludicrously false shock.

            Unfortunately, Lloyd came back out before Arthur could ask any further questions.  Having finished with the general shots, he wanted to take a few pictures of Brad in the dressing room.  Or rather, he _said_ he wanted a few, but he ended up taking about a dozen.  The number was decidedly excessive, making Arthur wonder if maybe Brad’s little stunt had worked all too much of its magic on Lloyd.  After that, Arthur said they’d better get going, but reminded Brad to call if he thought of any more details that might be useful for the article.

            “Yeah, I’ll call,” Brad promised.  “But hey, let me see the article once you’ve got it written.  In case I wanna make any changes.”

            Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “Can you keep a secret?”

            “ _I’m_ not the one who leaked the info about you and Curt to the press,” Brad reminded him.  “And believe me, once that phony engagement was announced, they all came sniffing around here trying to find out who he’d used that condom on.”

            “What did you tell them?” Lloyd asked.

            “I told ‘em I’d give them the full scoop if they gave me a blowjob,” Brad laughed.  “Can’t imagine why I didn’t get any takers!”

            “And what if you _had_ gotten some takers?” Arthur countered.

            “Well…uh…in that case…I…er…”

            Arthur sighed.  “I’ll show you the part of the article that talks about you,” he promised, “but you can’t see the whole thing before it goes into print.”

            “I can’t believe you don’t trust me anymore!”

            “When did I ever trust you?  Shaggin’ someone and trustin’ them are _not_ the same thing.”

            Brad found that very amusing, of course.  One of the show’s staff came up while he was laughing, and insisted on escorting Arthur and Lloyd out of the studio.

            As they were headed back to the subway, Lloyd stashed Brad’s camera in the bag with his own camera.  “I’ll be headed to the _Freedoms_ office to develop the pictures right away,” he said.

            “Good.  Let me know how they turn out,” Arthur said.  “I gave you the number for Curt’s place, yeah?”

            “Yes, you did.”

            Arthur nodded.  “Oh, and I promised Brad you’d call him to let him know if any of his pictures worked.  And so you could arrange to give back his camera.  Here, let me give you his number.”  He jotted down Brad’s home number on a spare piece of paper, and handed it to Lloyd.  “He doesn’t get home until ten or eleven on nights _Talk to Harry_ films, though.”

            Lloyd nodded, and assured him that he’d call Brad that night.


	30. Chapter 30

            As much as he’d have preferred to spend the day relaxing, Arthur didn’t feel like he had any choice.  After he got back to Curt’s flat and did his best _not_ to give any hints as to just what had happened between Brian and Brad, he had to cloister himself away and get to work on the articles.  The re-write of the _Herald_ piece was pretty much done, but this new one…there was a lot of work to be done.

            Lloyd’s phone call later that afternoon was a godsend.  The pictures from Brad’s camera were a little blurry, but Tommy’s white suit with its sequins and his big blond pompadour made him easy to recognize, even when a little out of focus.  And there was no question from the photos just what he was doing to Brad.  The pictures didn’t provide even the slightest hint that it might not have been fully consensual—though Arthur was at this point quite sure that Brad had actually _wanted_ Tommy to bugger him—but that was probably for the best:  people would have trouble enough swallowing the story’s main point without adding rape on top of it.  Without any kind of proof, Arthur would have to tone down—or even remove—all such implications.

            That was all right, though.  The point hadn’t been to call Tommy Stone a rapist.  The point had been to tell the world that Tommy Stone was Brian Slade.  And that he was going to do.

            Arthur only let up working on the article when it was time for the evening news and dinner.  Though Curt didn’t want to, Arthur insisted that they watch the news together.  To his surprise, he found that he and Curt were once again featured in the entertainment section of the news.  This time, the story was that Immigrations was looking into whether or not Arthur was an illegal alien—of all the ludicrous ideas!—on the suggestion of the Committee for Cultural Renewal.  The story also featured a recorded interview with Tommy Stone, accusing Curt of having smuggled Arthur into the country in order to destabilise the nation, and further claiming that the relationship between Curt and Arthur was clearly falsified for the publicity, “just like his alleged affair with Brian Slade.”

            “I think he translated the message in your flowers,” Arthur laughed.

            “Yeah, looks that way,” Curt agreed.  “Guess he doesn’t want me to break up with you anymore.”

            Arthur’s good mood vanished.  “He…what?”

            “Did I not mention that?”

            Arthur shook his head.  Curt sighed, and explained a few very important details he’d left out earlier when he told Arthur about the call from Tommy Stone.  Curt honestly didn’t seem to think that it was in any way a big deal, but Arthur couldn’t see it as anything but the biggest.  The last time Brian Slade had asked Curt to work with him, he had really meant that he wanted Curt to sleep with him.

            Was that what he meant this time?

            It had to be, surely.  Had Curt genuinely missed that?  Or did he no longer want to get back together with Brian?  Neither seemed terribly believable to Arthur.

            He continued to worry about it until Curt started nibbling on his earlobe to convince him that they should turn in early.  In a more normal state of mind, he probably would have resisted, since he still had so much work to do.  As it was, Arthur agreed eagerly, desperate for the sexual union that would prove—however briefly—that Curt still desired him as much as Arthur did Curt.

            The relief didn’t last long.  Arthur woke up in the wee hours, doubt gnawing at him.  Curt was cuddled up behind him, snoring lightly; everything should have seemed completely perfect.  And yet all Arthur could feel was the terror that Curt was going to leave him alone again, and that this time it would last forever.

            When Curt finally woke up, Arthur tried to act like everything was normal.  When Curt moved back a little, Arthur rolled over onto his back, smiled and kissed him good morning, just as he had the day before.  But Curt frowned at him.  “What’s wrong?”

            “Why would anything be wrong?” Arthur replied.

            “You look like you’ve been crying.”

            Had he been crying?  Maybe he _had_ shed a few tears, but it shouldn’t have been enough to show on his face.  Arthur glanced over at the mirror, wishing he had a view of his reflection from here.

            “Okay, that just _proves_ something’s wrong,” Curt sighed.  “You’ve gotta do something about that habit you’ve got of avoiding eye contact when you’ve got something to hide.  You’d be fucked if you tried playing poker.”

            “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Arthur insisted.

            “Look me in the eye and say that.”

            Uncomfortably, Arthur looked back over at Curt, expecting him to be angry; he certainly _sounded_ that way.  But Curt actually looked worried.  “Really, Curt, there’s no reason for you to be worried about me.”

            “Nice try.  But it’s not _me_ who’s worried:  it’s you.  So what’s eating you?”

            Arthur sighed.  “It’s just…that call you got from Brian—from Tommy Stone.”

            “Why the fuck would that be worrying you?”

            “Because I don’t want you to go back to him!”

            Curt just stared at him for about thirty seconds, then started laughing.  “I really don’t have any idea what’s going on in that head of yours.  Just what part of that story made you think that could ever happen?”

            “Why else would he want to work with you again?”

            “‘Cause I happen to be the best in the business, of course!” Curt insisted, with a confidence that had to be at least partially false.  “It’s not like he wanted to get back together with me.”

            “Yeah, and that’s why he wanted you to break up with me.  ‘Cause he’s _not_ interested in hookin’ back up with you,” Arthur replied, trying not to sound as bitter as he felt.

            Curt chuckled, and stroked his cheek.  “You don’t have to be jealous, Arthur.  He’s never once looked back since we broke up.  He’d probably been trying to get rid of me for months, and I’d been too dumb or too drunk to notice.”

            Arthur couldn’t maintain his gaze.  If he kept quiet now, he’d be lying to Curt…

            “Now what’s wrong?” Curt asked.  An edge of annoyance was definitely creeping into his voice.

            Arthur sighed deeply.  “You’re wrong,” he said, shutting his eyes miserably.  There was nothing for it.  He had to come clean.  “He did look back, at least once.”

            “How would you know?”

            “Mandy lied to you.”  Arthur opened his eyes and looked right back into Curt’s.  “Brian _was_ there at the concert that day.  And I only noticed him because I’d seen Mandy notice him.”

            Curt stared at him, his brow furrowed, but his expression unreadable.  “I…”  He shook his head.  “Are you serious?”

            Arthur nodded.  “I hadn’t been positive it was really him, until Mandy told me about it when I was interviewin’ her earlier.”

            Curt sighed heavily.  “I…”  He shut his eyes for a long time, his face void of expression.  “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d seen him then,” he admitted, opening them again, “but what’s the point now?  Who gives a shit if he was there or not?  If he’d wanted to come back to me, he’d have done something about it.  And I don’t care if he wants that _now_.  Have you seen what he looks like now?  No way am I fucking that.”

            Arthur laughed despite himself.  “That’s not actually all that reassurin’,” he said.  “It’s purely physical…”

            Curt grinned, and leaned forward to kiss him.  “How many girls have ever hit on you in your life?”

            “What’s that got to do with anything?”

            “Seriously, how many?”

            Arthur shrugged.  “A few.  Not very many.”

            “And how many _men_ have hit on you?”

            “Er…”  Arthur tried to remember them all.  “Ah…a dozen…or so…?”

            “Probably twice that many,” Curt chuckled.  “And that’s why you don’t have anything to worry about.”

            “You lost me.”

            “Pheromones.”

            “What?”

            “You know, the sex smells people put out,” Curt said.

            Arthur laughed.  “That’s not remotely an accurate definition.”

            “Close enough.  I read about them once, too.”

            “The prison library was out of fiction?” Arthur asked.

            “Yeah, pretty much.  They didn’t have much to begin with.  Thing is, it’s this smell that you’re not aware of, but it affects how people react to you, right?  Whether they want to fuck you or not.”

            “That’s not really—”

            “So Brian’s got these crazy fucking pheromones,” Curt went on, ignoring his objections.  “They send the message that he wants to screw everyone and everything.”

            “Uh…do I want to know where you’re goin’ with this?”  Arthur was pretty sure he didn’t…

            “You know what message yours send?”

            “I think I’d rather not, actually.”

            “Yours say you need a hard cock in your ass.”

            “No, they definitely do _not_ say that,” Arthur insisted.  He was quite sure of that.

            “Yeah, they do.  That’s why guys are all over you, but girls leave you alone, despite how gorgeous you are.”

            Arthur hoped the compliment wasn’t making him blush, considering how unpleasant everything else in the conversation was at the moment.  “Even if that was true, why would that reassure me any?”

            “Because I want to keep you all to myself,” Curt said, running one hand down along Arthur’s chest.  “I’m not about to let anyone else have you.”

            “Curt, that makes no bleedin’ sense,” Arthur said, with a bit of a scowl.  “It doesn’t follow logically from _anything_ you just said, and bein’ treated like someone’s property—even yours!—doesn’t exactly make me feel good!”

            “That’s because making you feel good is _my_ job,” Curt replied.

            “Is that supposed to make sense?”

            Instead of answering, Curt kissed him.  It was deep and intense, the kind of kiss that made Arthur feel _loved_ in the depths of his soul.  But just as he started getting really into it, Curt suddenly stopped kissing him again.  That was getting to be a regular problem…

            Curt was pawing through the drawer on the bedside table.  “What are you—” Arthur started, but he stopped as soon as Curt pulled the lubricant out.  “Curt, it’s first thing in the morning!” he objected.

            “But you need it,” Curt insisted, and he started dispensing lubricant onto one thick finger.

            “Th-that may be so, but—ah—I—I 'ave work I should—mm—should be—”  Arthur fought to keep talking, to keep objecting, even after Curt’s finger reached its destination, spreading the lubricant around just inside him, but he quickly lost focus on the words.

            “Yeah, you have work you should be doing,” Curt agreed.  “So?”

            “So I should—I should tell you to stop…”

            “Are you going to?”

            “No,” Arthur moaned.  “I want to feel you inside me.”

            “See, I told you.  That’s exactly what your pheromones say to every man who comes near you.”

            “No,” Arthur insisted.  “Not every man.  Just you.”

            “Yeah.  Just me…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of the previous chapter for those who skipped it:
> 
> Arthur fetched Lloyd, to go take photographs in the dressing room at the "Talk to Harry" soundstage. Based on his phone conversation with Brad, he thought that Tommy had raped Brad.  
> The longer they talked in the dressing room, however, the more it was made clear that Brad had actually been trying to fully seduce Tommy, and had merely been startled by the haste with with the intercourse was begun. (Also, he was still in a bit of pain, because Tommy hadn't used lubricant.)
> 
> In the incidental conversation on the way to the studio, Lloyd explains to Arthur that Ms. Forsyth isn't so mean to them because they're men, but because she hates the entire human race.  
> And during the sequence at the studio, Brad develops an instant interest in Lloyd. (Which is largely irrelevant, but it does get some minor references later, so...)


	31. Chapter 31

            The process of writing up the article on Brian Slade’s transformation into Tommy Stone had two major impediments.  The first was ongoing, but extremely pleasant, in that Curt’s sex drive had no respect for the regular decencies that kept most people from having sex at all hours.  The second was neither ongoing nor pleasant.

            Arthur was about halfway through the first draft, maybe a little further, when Lloyd called Curt’s flat.  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” he asked.

            “I shudder to think,” Arthur sighed.  “Why?”

            “A bunch of men in suits took away half the stuff in your apartment, including your computer,” Lloyd told him.  “When I asked them what they were doing, they said they worked for the government.”

            “Why would they take my computer?”

            “Maybe they thought you were using it to do illegal things?” Lloyd suggested.

            “There’s no reason to take the computer.  They could have just taken the disks.  The computer’s just a bog standard unit, no different from any of the others.”

            “Computers don’t have a way of storing information?”

            “Yeah, they’ve got disks.  The computer’s of no use to them.”  Arthur scowled.  He figured that he’d been robbed by some clever criminals who thought they could get away with it by pretending to be government agents.  So he told Lloyd that he’d deal with it, and headed back to his flat, expecting to find the lock broken and the place ransacked.

            When he got there, he found that the door had been opened with a key, and that there was a receipt left on the desk, cataloguing everything that had been taken as ‘evidence.’  The receipt wasn’t made out by the police, or even Immigrations, but by the Committee for Cultural Renewal.

            Clearly, his belongings were a lost cause.

            Fortunately, they hadn’t taken anything with any _true_ value.  The computer could be replaced, and most of the personal contents of the disks he had in hard copy—though they’d taken most of those, too.  For some reason they’d taken most of his books, but they weren’t exactly rare books, and he hadn’t marked them up—though most of them were used books, and some had been marked up by previous owners.  If they thought they could learn anything about him from those markings…well, good luck to them!

            All in all, the trip back to his flat was just so much wasted time.

            And that meant he had to work all the harder to get the article done on time.

            He managed it, but it was quite a close call.  The ink was barely dry on the last page by the time Arthur arrived back at the _Freedoms_ office with the two articles to show to Ms. Forsyth.  She wouldn’t let him stay in her office while she read them, so he had to wait outside, talking to Libby about what it was like to work there.  That was probably the more pleasant experience anyway.

            When Ms. Forsyth called him back into the office, Arthur found that the loose pages of his two articles had been neatly arranged in two stacks in front of her on the desk.  “What did you write these on?” she asked.  “It’s been years since I saw shaky text like that.  It’s like you used a typewriter from the 1940s.”

            Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “It might be that old, yes,” he agreed, then quickly explained that since his computer had been stolen, he’d had no choice but to try borrowing a typewriter from the novelist in the flat across from Curt’s.  But the novelist was using his good typewriter, and could only loan out an old one.  An antique, practically.

            “Well, in the future, I want computer-typed submissions,” Ms. Forsyth said sternly, “with copies turned in directly to the layout department’s computer.  Libby will provide you with the software you need.”

            “So you like the stories, then,” Arthur concluded, his heart soaring at the realisation that he was properly employed once more.

            “They’re not bad.”  Ms. Forsyth nodded her head as she spoke.  “This one is quite the scoop,” she added, patting the taller stack of paper with the palm of one hand.  “I’m a little surprised you didn’t decide to take it to a larger magazine once you saw what you’d written.”

            “The way things are right now, I don’t think most places would touch me,” Arthur sighed.  “Besides, I said I’d write it for this magazine, and I’m a man of my word.”  There was also the fact that a more widely distributed periodical would be more likely to attract the attention of Tommy Stone’s protectors, but he was fairly sure it would be better not to mention their existence to Ms. Forsyth, lest she decide it was too risky to run the story.

            “It does need some revisions, though,” Ms. Forsyth went on, pushing the papers towards him.  “I’ve marked the changes I need.”

            Arthur nodded, picking up the typed-up article.  “I’ll get them done as soon as I can.  Though I guess I’ll have to buy a computer first.”

            “I’m sure your boyfriend can pay for one easily enough,” Ms. Forsyth said, with as close to a smile as he’d yet seen on her face.  “There’s one thing I want made clear to me right now, though.”

            “Yes?”

            “Your article seems to be skirting around the issue.  Almost waffling.  What Tommy Stone did with that man in the dressing room, was it rape?”

            Arthur’s face screwed up in uncertainty for just a moment.  “To be honest, I’m not sure what to call it.  When Brad described it on the phone, it sounded like rape, and that’s what Lloyd thought when we were there talkin’ to him about it, but…I think Brad was really tryin’ to seduce him to full sex all along, and it was just the suddenness of it took him by surprise.”

            Ms. Forsyth recoiled slightly.  “Is Tommy Stone what gay men consider attractive?”

            “I can’t speak for anyone but myself,” Arthur said, “but I don’t find him attractive in the least.”  Which made the knowledge that he was actually Brian Slade all the more distressing, considering just how much Arthur had fancied Brian back in Manchester.  “It’s not necessarily just about attraction.  That was the same room where Curt and I…uh…”

            “Fucked?” Ms. Forsyth supplied.

            Arthur nodded sheepishly.  He wasn’t entirely comfortable discussing sex with a woman—not one he wasn’t involved with, anyway—and certainly not with one who was also now his employer.  “Brad’s an ex of mine, so…I think when I asked him to draw Tommy out a little bit, he decided to take it all the way.”

            “Some sort of dick measuring contest,” Ms. Forsyth concluded.

            “Not…exactly…”

            “It’s a matter of wanting his pride to match up to or exceed yours, yes?”

            “Well, sort of,” Arthur answered, wishing he could find quite the right way to explain what he was trying to say.  But it was rather nebulous, and he really didn’t think Ms. Forsyth was going to understand.

            “So it’s a dick measuring contest,” Ms. Forsyth repeated.  “One thing you need to understand about me:  I speak plainly, and I expect everyone around me to do the same.  If you can’t handle that…”

            “I’ll do my best to adjust,” Arthur assured her.  Starting, hopefully, with spending as little time as possible speaking to her.

            “Good.  But getting back to the article, if it wasn’t rape, then you need to make damn sure it’s clear that it was consensual,” Ms. Forsyth said, scowling at him.  “We’re likely to get sued by Tommy Stone’s publicity machine when this is printed, regardless of its factuality, but if we even hint at accusing him of a criminal act, we will not only lose, but will be shut down permanently, and both you and I will likely be facing criminal charges of our own.”

            Arthur nodded.  “I’ll be sure there’s no hint of such an accusation in the new draft.”  In fact, he hadn't thought he'd put in any such hints in the draft as it stood...

            “Fine.  I’ll need the re-write as soon as possible, considering we’ll need to acquire a lot of photos to supplement it.  Next two days if you can.”

            “Oh, about the photos!”  Arthur dug into his satchel and pulled out a few old magazines, handing them to Ms. Forsyth.  “I’ve marked some articles in here that have good photos you could use.  A good shot of Brian’s face to compare to Tommy’s, and a shot of Brian with Shannon.  But…”

            “But what?” Ms. Forsyth asked, looking up at him suspiciously.

            Arthur exhaled slowly.  He had to phrase this carefully.  “I think it might be best if you asked for all the photos from the latter article, instead of just the picture with Shannon in it.  Tommy Stone’s got a big publicity machine, like you said, and since Shannon’s in charge of it…I’m sure they’re trained to have warning bells go off if anyone starts lookin’ for pictures of her with Brian.  But if you ask for the photos from that article…well, given the kind of magazine this is, they’ll probably think you’re doin’ a retrospective on Curt’s affair with Brian.”  He’d really scoured every magazine he could find to get an article that showed both Curt and Brian together as well as Brian and Shannon.

            Ms. Forsyth stared at him for a moment, then nodded.  “It seems an unnecessary precaution, but I suppose having the extra photos can’t hurt.  Unless there’s something else you’re not telling me?”

            “I think I’ve told you what you need to know,” Arthur told her, carefully maintaining eye contact.  Just in case Curt was right that he usually looked away when he had something to hide.

            “All right.  Get to work, then.  Make sure you talk to Libby about the software.”

            “I will,” Arthur assured her, tucking the corrected draft into his satchel before he left the room.

            Libby was smiling at him as he approached her desk again.  “Went well, did it?”

            “How’d you know?”

            “I didn’t hear any shouting,” Libby laughed.  “She does lose her temper pretty easily.  But you’re probably used to dealing with that.  Paycheques are sent out at the same time as the issues.  Oh, you’ll need to fill these forms out,” she added, handing him two or three sheets of paper.  “Tax information and such, mostly.  As long as we have them by the first of the month, that’s fine.”

            Arthur nodded, and tucked the papers in his bag along with the article.  “Ms. Forsyth said I should ask you about the software I need?”

            “Oh, right!”  Libby opened a drawer on the file cabinet behind her.  “What kind of computer do you have?”

            “At the moment, none.  Mine was stolen.”

            “I’m sorry to hear that.  Well, all I’ve got ready right now is an IBM disk, so when you get a new one, make sure it’ll run it,” she said, pulling a floppy disk out of a file folder in the drawer.  “It’s special software that was written for us,” Libby explained, handing it over to Arthur.  “Ms. Forsyth’s brother is a programmer, you see.  Anyway, I think you’ll find it pretty straight-forward, and it’s got a help menu you might want to read over the first time you start it up.  If you need more help, you can always call the office here.”  She paused, looking thoughtful.  “Oh, do you know how to use a modem?”

            “Yeah, I had one with my old computer.  It was stolen, too, though.”  Despite that there was no possible way that anyone could learn anything about him from his _modem_.  For that matter, they’d even taken the _printer_.  Maybe their office needed new computer hardware.

            “Okay, good.”  Libby wrote down a phone number, and handed it to him.  “That’s the number for the layout department’s computer.  There’s an option in the software to let you call in and transmit the whole story straight to layout.”

            Arthur could feel his eyebrows raising unconsciously.  “Very efficient.”

            “Yup.  We’re lazy around here.  Like to do everything we can without lifting an extra finger,” Libby laughed.  “But you should probably get going.  Buying a computer’s a long process.”

            Arthur sighed deeply, and nodded, thanking Libby for her help on the way out.


	32. Chapter 32

            Given that he knew nothing about computers, Curt would have preferred to let Arthur go by himself to buy one, but since he was having to be the one to pay for it, he didn’t have much choice.  Once upon a time, a computer store might have had an interesting display of Atari games for him to look at, but it had been a year or two since the last time a new game came out.  There were games for computers, but he wasn’t sure he should be looking at those.  It was going to be Arthur’s machine for work, after all, and he’d probably get pissy if Curt wanted to play games on it.  Or maybe he wouldn’t?  It was worth asking, anyway.

            Curt wandered back over to where Arthur was talking to the sales clerk.  He didn’t understand half the stuff they were saying, until the clerk finally patted the monitor of a display model.  “This one should meet all your requirements,” he said, with a small, almost condescending smile.

            “Can it play games?” Curt asked, looking at it.  It did _not_ look impressive.  It was currently displaying some green text on a black screen.

            “Do you have children?” the clerk asked, sounding perplexed.

            “Who the fuck said anything about children?”

            “Curt, can you not complicate this process, please?” Arthur asked.  “Who’d be playin’ games on it?”

            Curt shrugged.  “I might.”

            Arthur raised a curious eyebrow, then shrugged, and looked back at the clerk.  “How does it compare to the others for runnin’ games?”

            “Well, it depends on the game,” the other man said, eyeing Curt like he came from another planet.  “I think you’ll find it adequate, but if you’re really interested in playing games, I’d recommend the Apple II line of—”

            “It’s for my business use,” Arthur said, cutting him off.  “And my business software is IBM.”

            The clerk gladly accepted the statement—seemed relieved by it, in fact—and was quickly going into detail about price and payment plans and all that kind of shit.  The bill for the machine alone was surprisingly high, but Curt had had higher clothing bills back in the day, so he didn’t really care much.  Though now that he was thinking about it, he’d have to buy Arthur some better clothes at some point.  His clothes were fucking ugly.

            Once the computer was paid for, they carried its ridiculously oversized box—at least twice the size of the display machine—out and shoved it in the back seat of the borrowed car they’d come in.  Curt still didn’t trust the cops not to pull him over at every opportunity in his own car.  That had been the right call, considering the size of that box.  It’d never have even _fit_ in the back of his GTO.

            After they left the parking lot and were back out on the streets, Arthur looked over at him curiously.  “When did you get an interest in computer games?” he asked.

            Curt coughed.  He was in for it now, wasn’t it?  “I, uh, might kind of have gotten an Atari after I got out of jail…”

            Arthur laughed, but it was a warm, friendly laugh.  “Can’t believe you didn’t say anything sooner,” he said, still chuckling.  “I haven’t seen one around the flat.”

            “It’s in the closet.”

            “You’re ashamed of it?”

            “A grown man playing games?  Why wouldn’t I be?” Curt retorted.

            “You’re only grown up on the outside,” Arthur told him, patting his knee.  “You’re still a teenager on the inside.”

            “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

            Arthur shrugged when Curt glanced over at him.  “Take it as you will.”

            Curt took it be annoying.

            But Arthur kept drawing him out about the Atari, and soon he forgot his annoyance, and was telling Arthur all about his favorite games.  Arthur had never played any video games, not even in arcades, but he said he’d be glad to learn about them after his article was fixed up and turned in.

            Once they wrestled the computer box out of the car, into the elevator and then into the apartment, Curt helped Arthur get it out of its box.  He was astonished to see that most of the box had just been filled with form-fitted Styrofoam.  After it was out of the box, though, he was just in the way as Arthur tried to set it up in the back bedroom, so Curt left him to it, got the Atari out of the closet, and hooked it back up to the television.  He’d already played all his games countless times, but it was relaxing to forget his troubles for a while.

            He was in the midst of _Pitfall!_ when the doorbell rang.  Before he’d even put the controller down, the person on the other side started knocking, too.  To the rhythm of ‘La Bamba.’  Because she just _had_ to be weird.

            Curt opened the door and glared down at Tee.  “Did you actually _need_ something?” he asked.

            “The press got tired of asking me if I’m really a lesbian, so now I’m bored,” she told him.  “Ooh, are you playing silly games again?!” she exclaimed as she pushed past him.

            “Keep it down!  Arthur’s writing in the other room.”  Assuming he’d gotten the computer set up by now.

            “How can you stare at these ugly little pictures all day without your eyes falling out?” Tee asked, peering at the television from way too close up.

            “I don’t spend all day at it,” Curt sighed, sitting down on the sofa.  “Did you really come over just to annoy me?”

            “Well…actually…”  Tee let out a deep sigh, and sat down on the nearer armchair.  “I had a call from my parents.”

            “Didn’t go well?”

            Tee shook her head.  “They didn’t know the truth.  How could I have told them?”  She pulled her feet up onto the seat of the chair so she could hug her knees like a depressed little kid.  “They hadn’t been answering their phone for the longest time, but they finally called me this morning.  They said I shouldn’t consider myself their daughter unless I give up my sinful ways and settle down with a nice, wholesome man.”

            “So fuck ‘em,” Curt said.

            “What kind of thing is _that_ to say?!”

            “Parents are shit to people like us.  Join the fucking club.  You know what _my_ parents did, right?”

            Tee pursed her lips.  “I know what you like to say they did, but I don’t believe it for a minute.  Who’d do that to their own son?”

            “My fucking parents, that’s who,” Curt snarled.  “I’m sure you can find the medical records if you go look.”

            Tee looked away from his face, back over at the television.

            “What about the rest of your family?” Curt asked.  “Emilio’s okay with it, right?”

            “No!” Tee shrieked, looking back at him.  Her eyes were slowly spewing tears.  “Not _one_ of my brothers or sisters is standing up for me!  They all say I’m a complete disgrace!”

            Sighing, Curt got up and moved over to pat her on the shoulder.  It was the best he could think of to comfort her.  He wasn’t used to crying women.  Especially when he wasn’t the one who made them cry.  Tee hugged him and started crying against his stomach.  “You’ve still got a fan base,” Curt told her.  “They’ll get over their shock soon enough.  Some of them won’t forgive you, but if they really love your music, they’ll accept you for who you are.  And they’ll be your new family.”  He stroked her hair gently.  “Trust me, we’ve all been through this.  Me, Brian, Mandy, Arthur…it’s just how it is.  You’ll find someone new to be your family.”

            Tee hugged him tighter.  “You’re not my family?” she sniffled.

            Curt laughed.  “Yeah, I guess I am.  I’ll be your new brother.”

            “No, you’re my new dad,” Tee insisted.

            “Fuck you.”

            Tee giggled, and let go of him again, drying her eyes, though she was still crying a bit.  “Well, daddy, are you gonna help me get a new job?”

            “Call me that again, and I’ll punch your teeth in,” Curt told her, sitting back down on the sofa.  “Really, your job hasn’t gone anywhere.”

            “They cancelled my recording contract.”

            “But your manager’s sticking with you, right?”

            Tee nodded.  “For now.”

            “He won’t give up such a good meal ticket so easy,” Curt assured her.  “And if he does, who cares?  There’s lots of other sharks in the sea.”  He leaned back against the back of the sofa.  “You want me to see if I can get you in that benefit concert next month?” he asked.

            “Would they want me?”

            “You have a lot of fans, and most of them probably don’t listen to any of the artists currently involved in the concert, so why would they not want you?” Curt laughed.  “More paying bodies is always a good thing.”

            Tee smiled.  “Sounds like a good idea, then.  Working helps take your mind off your troubles.”

            “So does sex,” Curt laughed.  “You should go out and find yourself a girlfriend.”

            “It’s not that easy,” Tee sighed.  “I’m very picky about my girlfriends.”

            “You’d get laid more often if you weren’t.”

            “Ugh.  Give me quality over quantity any day.”

            Curt glanced over at the closed door behind which Arthur was working.  “Yeah,” he agreed, with a soft smile, “quality is best.”  Then he laughed, looking back at Tee.  “Even better is when you can have both.”

            “Oh, is Arthur a two-for-one special?”

            “Something like that.”


	33. Chapter 33

            Arthur seemed really happy to be able to dedicate himself to revising his article, now that he knew it was really gonna be published.  That was good.  Curt liked seeing Arthur happy.  What he _didn’t_ like was the fact that Arthur had spent the past two days cloistered in the back room, not paying any attention to him.  How could it take that long just to re-write something as simple as a magazine article?  It wasn’t like reworking lyrics.  Those were really fucking tough, ‘cause you had to worry about the rhyme and the meter, and how well it fit the rest of the lyrics.

            For perhaps the dozenth time in the past six months, Curt got out his hand-written sheet music for “The Stars Are Falling,” and had a look at the lyrics.  Changing it to be something story-appropriate for Tee’s movie had been easy enough, ‘cause it hadn’t really had to _mean_ anything.  Plus it wasn’t going on one of _his_ albums, so who cared anyway?  But he really wanted to put the real song on his next album—assuming there was going to be a ‘next album’—and he really couldn’t publicly perform this pornographic version, no matter how funny it would be to watch people react to it.

            Given everything that had happened in the past week or so, Curt had decided it was best to leave it as being about Arthur.  Why should he pretend otherwise?  The press was already comparing Arthur to Brian, so if he had any career left to save, it was going to look best if this one, too, was something deep and lasting, and writing a nice, sexy love song about Arthur would certainly make it very clear to everyone that it really was.  Plus he’d never written a love song about Brian, so that’d be one extra “fuck you” to ‘Tommy Stone.’

            Throwing out the lyrics of the original verses while keeping the topic the same seemed the best idea.  So long as he was still describing the events of that night, that was what mattered.  Better to spend more time on the build-up and less on the sex.  That would make it easier to avoid being pornographic.

            If he spent the first verse talking about seeing Arthur backstage, and then noticing him staring at him across the room, hauntingly beautiful yet expressionless, then he could spend the second verse talking about Arthur’s arrival on the roof.  He’d even be able to use a few of those questions he had asked—better to skip the only one that got answered, though, just in case anyone realized this was based on something that had actually happened.  That still left too much time talking about the sex, though.  Maybe move the other two down a verse, and have the actual first verse talk about the performance, how he wasn’t looking to find love with a stranger when he went out on stage, couldn’t feel the desirous brown eyes fixed on him…

            Deciding that actually sounded pretty good, Curt started writing up some rough lyrics along those lines.  He’d barely gotten past the first verse when the phone rang.  Swearing under his breath, he hurried to answer it before it could interrupt Arthur’s work.

            “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Wild,” the woman on the other end said, “but I wanted to thank you again for getting Teresa Garcia to agree to take part in the benefit.”

            “Uh…”  Would it be unreasonable for him to lose his temper at her for calling up just for that?

            “I was wondering, though, if you knew anyone who might be able to officiate?”

            “To what?”  Since when did rock concerts need referees?

            “Well, to act as an MC, I guess you might say,” the woman from the charity self-corrected.  “We had a comedian lined up, but he dropped out suddenly.”

            Probably on Tommy Stone’s say-so.  “I think I might know someone,” Curt said, with a grin.  If Tommy Stone wanted to hamstring this benefit, then what would piss him off more than having _both_ his exes take part?

            “Oh, and the marketing department was wondering if you’d decided what songs you were going to sing yet.”

            “How many did you want me to perform again?”

            “You and Teresa are our biggest names, so you can play as many as you like, within reason,” the woman answered, with a nervous little laugh.  “Five maximum, I’d say.  Perhaps a sixth if the audience is demanding an encore.”

            Curt nodded.  “You said you’d be providing a back-up band, right?”

            “Yes, Stout Red Automaton said they’d be glad to play back-up for any singer who couldn’t provide their own.”  What kind of fucked up band name was that?

            “Do they know any of my songs?”

            “I can ask them if you want?”

            “Yeah, I guess you’d better.  If they’re gonna have to learn them all from scratch, then I might do all new songs, since I’ve got a number of ‘em I’ve never recorded yet.  You did say there was going to be an album, right?”  Group album or not, it would be the first one he’d put out in years…

            “Yes, we’ll be releasing a double album.  We might not have room for all of the songs if you and Teresa both perform five songs, though.”

            “That’s okay,” Curt assured her.  “Live, or studio recording?”

            “Live, with a studio back-up prepared in case the live recording gets damaged or has too much audience interference.”

            “If we do the studio sessions and they don’t get used, do I get to keep them for my next album?” Curt asked.

            “I’ll have to talk to the legal department about that, but I don’t see why not.  Though you’d have to credit the band backing you up in that case.”

            They talked a little while longer about the logistics of the concert and its accompanying album, then Curt got back to work on the new lyrics for “The Stars Are Falling.”  Suddenly he had a whole lot more motivation to get it done fast.  If he could just get it polished up, he could debut it at the benefit concert.  He already knew that the “Chicken Little” version had been well received—before everything went to shit, it was getting more radio play than any of Tee’s songs from the movie—so hopefully audiences would also appreciate the real version.

            If they didn’t, that might mean it really was time to retire…

 

***

 

            As soon as Arthur got all the requested revisions finished on the Brian Slade/Tommy Stone article, he made sure Curt wasn’t using the phone, and then used the modem to submit it directly to _Freedoms_ ’ layout department.  Unsure what the procedure was, after that had been done, he called Ms. Forsyth to let her know he had turned it in.  She said she’d have layout print up a copy for her to read over, and then she’d let him know if it still needed work.

            While he was waiting for her to call back, he went into the living room and listened to Curt practicing for the benefit concert, which was by now barely more than two weeks away.  He wasn’t practicing singing, but using his guitar to go over some of the instrumental harmony parts for the back-up band to play.  Arthur had never realised before just how much effort Curt had to put into writing the music of his songs.

            Eventually, Ms. Forsyth called back, and told him that the article was acceptable, and that she’d let him know in a few days what his next assignment would be.  Arthur suggested that he could cover the benefit concert—since it was raising money for AIDS research, it was obviously of considerable interest to the magazine’s readership—but she rejected the notion out of hand, saying he was too biased to provide suitably detached coverage.  She was right, of course, but hearing it put so bluntly had stung a bit.

            Curt noticed that Arthur looked a bit down, and said that he’d do something to cheer him up.  “What’s that, then?” Arthur asked, fully expecting Curt to go into explicit detail on some sexual position they hadn’t yet dabbled with.  If there _was_ such a position.

            “I’ve been wanting to bounce the new lyrics off you,” Curt said, with a smile.  “This seems like a good time.”

            Before Arthur could ask for more details, Curt started playing the guitar intro to “Chicken Little.”  Or rather, to “The Stars Are Falling.”  The new lyrics were beautiful, and perfectly evoked all his fond memories of that night, without resorting to the outright pornography of the original version.

            When he was finished, Curt set his guitar aside, and looked at Arthur expectantly.  “What do you think?”

            Arthur got up, walked over to the chair where Curt was sitting, and leaned down to kiss him passionately.  “Let’s go into the bedroom, and I’ll show you how much I loved it,” he suggested.

            Curt naturally agreed eagerly, and they were soon making very passionate love, after which they fell into a contented slumber in each others’ arms.

            “Hey.”

            Arthur woke up to the sound of Curt’s voice.  “What?” he asked blearily.

            “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and if your article’s done, this is probably the right time to deal with it,” Curt said.

            “Deal with what?”

            “You should pack up your stuff and just move in,” Curt told him.

            Arthur could feel himself flush.  “Isn’t that a bit soon?  We—we haven’t been together all that long…”

            “You don’t want to?”

            “I didn’t say that.”

            Curt sighed.  “Yeah, it’s kinda soon,” he admitted, “but c’mon, you’re not even using your place at this point, except to store some of your crap.  There’s no reason to pay for that.”  He shook his head.  “Besides, it’s…”

            “What?”

            Curt shut his eyes.  “This is gonna sound bad,” he said.

            “That’s okay,” Arthur assured him.

            “We have to think about how it’s gonna look to everyone else,” Curt told him, opening his eyes again.  “Straight people were able to get behind me and Brian because we were acting in public like it was this fantastic eternal romance.”

            “You’re sayin’ it wasn’t?”

            Curt laughed.  “Jesus, Arthur, why’s that so upsetting to you?  You look like you’re gonna cry!”

            “You can’t ‘ave been fakin’ it!  I saw how upset you were at—”

            “I didn’t say I was faking it!” Curt exclaimed, cutting him off.  “But it’s not like…fuck, I wasn’t even sober enough to think about whether it was some kind of true love thing or not.  It was good sex, and I liked listening to him talk, even if I was too fucked up to understand half of what he said.  I never wanted it to end, but…it was pretty fucking shallow, really.”

            “What happened to ‘we set out to change the world,’ then?” Arthur countered.

            “You think that requires ‘deep’?” Curt replied with a laugh.  “Trust me, it doesn’t.  We were acting like a couple of idealistic kids.  Ones with access to too much booze and way too many drugs.  It was empty dreaming, that’s all.”  Curt reached over and pushed some loose hair away from Arthur’s face, then cradled his cheek in one palm.  “My point is just that if we want people to accept us—and if I’m gonna keep trying to have a career at all—then we have to present them the same kind of thing.  They have to look at us and see true love.”

            Arthur smiled.  “Okay,” he said, turning his head a little so he could kiss Curt’s palm.  “I can do that.”  It was, after all, true love on his end…


	34. Chapter 34

            The universe, it seemed, found humour in awkward timing.  As soon as Arthur was finished with his story and free to spend a few days doing nothing but being with Curt, that was when the charity insisted on Curt spending several days in a studio, pre-recording all his songs for the benefit concert’s album.  Of course, Arthur was allowed to accompany him to the studio and watch the recording session, but that hadn’t really been what he had in mind in terms of being with Curt.

            Not to mention that it turned out Curt was not always pleasant in the recording studio.  Arthur didn’t witness any fits to match the one Mandy had described—thank God!—but Curt’s natural short temper seemed exacerbated by the studio environment.  Maybe he just needed more space to breathe?

            There were two sides of the recording studio experience, at least for this album.  The simplest part, the recording of Curt’s vocals, was the second part.  The first part was that the band had to record the background music.  Normally, Curt wouldn’t always be a part of that, but for this album he naturally insisted on playing the most important guitar parts himself.  That led both to friction with the lead guitarist of Stout Red Automaton, and to quarrels with the entire band, as Curt would scream at them furiously if they screwed up his song.

            It was during one such fit of temper that Arthur heard some of the technicians talking.  “What are we going to do if he throws a tantrum like that on stage?” the man sitting right at the master tape deck asked.

            “He won’t,” the head technician said, with a chuckle.  “Curt Wild may be a nightmare in the recording studio, but he’s a pro when it comes to anything with an audience.  He’ll be too busy getting off on their reactions to notice if his back-up band fucks up.”

            “A pro?” the third tech—who didn’t actually seem to serve any function, as far as Arthur could tell from the back of the room—repeated.  “I heard he’s mooned the audience on more than one occasion.”

            “Yeah, probably,” the head technician laughed.  “He’s calmed down a lot since he laid off the drugs, though.  Trust me, I’ve worked with him before.  We’ve got nothing to worry about on stage.  It’s in here we should be worrying.  He’s trashed studios before, and there’s no money in the budget for replacing equipment.”

            “Actually,” a woman’s voice said from the doorway, “we _do_ have something to worry about on stage.”

            All three technicians snapped to attention.  Arthur recognised the woman, after a moment’s thought, as the one who had greeted them on their arrival at the studio.  She was one of the people organising the benefit, as far as he could tell.  She hadn’t introduced herself, and Curt apparently already knew her, but there hadn’t really been a chance for Arthur to ask about her.

            “What could we have to worry about on stage?” the head technician asked.  “He’s not going to—”

            “It’s not Curt I’m worried about,” she assured him, shaking her head.  “What I’m worried about is the press.  We had a deal with a film crew.  They were going to film the concert, and record some behind the scenes footage, then assemble it into a documentary.  Show it theatrically at a few art houses or film festivals, see if we could get an Oscar nod.  That kind of thing.  But now they’ve backed out on the deal.”

            “Let me guess,” Arthur interrupted, getting to his feet and approaching them.  “They’ve been offered a better job by the Committee for Cultural Renewal, and now they’ll be in Washington to record the fundraiser there.”

            The woman stared at him suspiciously.  “How did you know that?”

            He sighed.  “There’s…a bit of bad blood between Curt and Tommy Stone.  This’ll be Tommy’s next move in the quarrel between them.”

            “Well, it’s a very effective one!  Unless you happen to have access to an equally good documentary film crew,” the woman snapped, glaring at Arthur as if this was all _his_ fault.  Though, indirectly, it actually was, at least a bit.

            Arthur bit his lip a moment.  “I don’t—oh, wait, you know, I may just know someone.  Hold on, let me see if…”  He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and started sorting through the old receipts and other random scraps of paper stuffed in the one of the side compartments.  Jammed at the back, he found the one he was looking for.  “Right, here it is.  This is the number of a student at NYU who’s takin’ a class on documentary film-making.  No idea if she’s any good, but she’ll 'ave access to a camera and know how to use it.”

            “One camera is better than nothing, but ideally we really wanted eight to ten of them.”

            “It seems to me she might be able to talk some of her classmates into helpin’ her cover it, but I only met the woman the once, so I’ve no idea if she actually could.”

            “The bigger question is if she’d be willing to do any of it at all,” the woman said, with a deep sigh.  “Unless she gave you her number knowing you were involved with another man?”

            “Actually, she gave me her number ‘cause she was hopin’ to interview me for a documentary on glam rock’s heyday in London,” Arthur explained.  Better to simplify a bit.  Especially since _Freedoms_ would come out in a matter of days.  Mentioning Brian right now was probably not advisable.  “That bein’ the case, it doesn’t seem likely she’d refuse to document a live Curt Wild performance.”

            The woman nodded, then held out her hand towards Arthur.  “Give me the number, then.  I’ll contact her personally.  I need to know exactly what she can or can’t accomplish for me.”

            Arthur handed over the slip of paper moments before he heard the sound of knuckles rapping on glass.  Looking over, he saw that Curt and the members of Stout Red Automaton were all standing in the recording booth, staring out at the technicians.  Curt spread his hands to either side of him and clearly mouthed the word “What?!”

            The woman went to the microphone and turned it on.  “My apologies for the delay, Mr. Wild,” she said.  “There was a possible SNAFU regarding the technical aspects of the live performance, but we’ve got everything ironed out now.  You can get back to your recording whenever you’re ready.”

            Curt seemed entirely satisfied by that explanation, and soon he and the band were again recording the instrumentals for the song.

            If anyone was a pro, Arthur reflected, it was that woman.

 

***

 

            Arthur had never been so impatient for the post to arrive as he was on that 1st March.  Once it finally did, of course, he wasn’t interested in any of it—not even his first paycheque for his new job—except the copy of _Freedoms_ containing his articles.  The cover featured a collage of the faces of the biggest candidates from both parties, accompanied by text that read “Election Year Special!  Don’t Go to the Primaries Uninformed:  Where Do the Candidates Stand on Our Rights?  Find Out Inside!”  On the lower portion of the cover was another large section of text that read “10th Anniversary Retrospective!  Brian Slade:  Bisexual Icon or Political Tool?”

            Flipping directly past the issue’s cover story—to which his re-written _Herald_ article had been attached—Arthur opened the magazine to the Brian Slade story with trembling hands.  It opened with a huge, glorious photo of Brian on stage at the microphone, with the article’s new title “Who Is Brian Slade Now?” emblazoned across his chest.  As he looked over the next several pages, Arthur was struck more than anything else by how nicely everything had been laid out, how well the font complemented the story, and how perfectly each photo had been chosen.  They had come up with the perfect comparison shots for Brian and Tommy:  not only two close-ups where he was looking directly into the camera, but a really dramatic pair of side shots, so he was looking at himself across ten years from one page to the facing page.  The pictures of Tommy having his way with Brad had turned out far less blurry than Lloyd had implied:  it would be almost impossible for anyone to deny that the blond man in those pictures was Tommy Stone, though Arthur didn’t doubt that they were going to try very hard to do just that.

            When he was done looking at it, Arthur handed the magazine over to Curt, so he could read it—though of course he’d already read and approved of the rough drafts at every stage—then went to the phone to call Brad and tell him that if he wanted to, they could meet him somewhere to show him the finished product.  Brad replied that Lloyd had promised to bring a copy over to the station so Brad could read it after _Talk to Harry_ finished taping.  Arthur didn’t pry further; the less he knew about that, the happier he was likely to be, and the less likely he was to offer Lloyd condolences on his unfortunate choice of partner the next time he saw him.

            “So, did you pick the photos?” Curt asked, after he set down the magazine.

            “No, but I did suggest a few of them,” Arthur told him.  “How soon do you think we’ll see a reaction?”

            Curt shrugged.  “Depends who else reads it.  The usual news types won’t be bothering with a gay rights magazine.  But there’s a lot more gay musicians than people know, so I think the industry’ll get wind of this pretty quick.”

            “What about…”

            “There’s no way Brian reads something like this.  Fuck, he never used to read magazines at all.  Not even music-related ones.”  Curt shrugged.  “His babysitters, on the other hand, probably look over every magazine and newspaper on the planet.  We’ll probably be hearing the lawyers sharpening their teeth by tomorrow morning.”

            Arthur shuddered.  “Not quite what I had in mind,” he sighed.

            “Yeah, but if his lawyers make a stink about it, everyone else’ll start noticing,” Curt pointed out.  “Just don’t worry about it.”  Curt moved closer, and took Arthur into his arms.  “Right now, we should be celebrating.”

            “Good idea,” Arthur agreed, lowering his head to meet Curt’s kiss.


	35. Chapter 35

            Curt had said they’d hear from the lawyers the next morning, and he’d been right.  He just hadn’t expected the _way_ in which they’d hear from them.  A thick envelope was couriered over to the apartment at the crack of dawn—well, 8:30, but that was pretty fucking close to the crack of dawn as far as Curt was concerned—containing a lot of papers covered with legal mumbo jumbo.  Curt couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it, and even Arthur was quickly stymied by most of it.  The one part they really understood was the cover letter, which told them that unless both Arthur and the magazine printed a retraction and public apology, they would be facing both a civil suit and criminal charges.

            Arthur’s first move was to call his new boss.  But apparently she insisted that they were safe, and that if they were in fact sued, they would win, and could counter-sue.  Arthur didn’t seem relieved, so Curt called Alicia and explained the situation.  She—naturally—let him have it for not having warned her in advance, despite that it had nothing to do with her.  Then she said she’d come over and have a look at the papers.

            Alicia arrived with her husband in tow, which was surprising.  Normally, he stayed away from her work.  “I thought having an actual lawyer look over the papers would help,” she explained.

            “But I deal with real estate,” he sighed in objection.  Well, at least she trampled over _all_ the men in her life, not just her clients.  That was something.

            After Alicia and her husband had read over the papers a few times, and had a look at the article, her husband picked up the phone and started making a call, while Alicia looked at Curt and Arthur reproachfully.  “You’re probably well within your rights, but doing this without having a lawyer ready was just plain stupid.”

            “I’m sorry,” Arthur said.  He actually sounded like he meant it.

            “You don’t have to apologize to anyone, least of all _her_ ,” Curt told him.  He always chose the worst times to be spineless, didn’t he?

            “Don’t criticize him for having the decency to be polite,” Alicia snapped.  “Anyway, I’m assuming your magazine hasn’t provided you with a lawyer?”

            “Not so far as I know.”

            “That’s what I thought.  Well, my husband’s got good connections.  He’ll arrange for the best in the business.”

            “But I don’t have the money to pay even a poor lawyer, much less the best,” Arthur pointed out.

            Alicia laughed at him.  “Don’t worry; he’ll pay for himself.  If you’re sued, he’ll counter-sue after you win, and the winnings from that will pay for his salary.  And, like your editor told you, criminal charges will give you an opportunity to sue for malicious prosecution, and once again the winnings will pay his salary.”

            “Is that really how it works?”  That hadn’t been Curt’s experience…

            “Not normally, no,” Alicia agreed, “but that’s where the beauty of having connections comes in.  Besides, think of the publicity for the firm that defends you!  This’ll turn into a real three ring circus.”

            “Oh God…”  Arthur seemed to shrink.  He really didn’t like the spotlight much, did he?  There’s no way that was the case ten years ago; he’d been dressed like he was born for the stage.  What happened to change him so much?

            “When’s it going to start?” Curt asked.  “It’s not gonna interfere with my concert, right?”

            “ _Your_ concert?” Alicia repeated.  “You’re just one among many, and you’re not even the headliner anymore; Teresa Garcia is.”

            Curt scowled.  Why the fuck was Tee getting top billing?  He was already a star when she was barely out of diapers!  And she didn’t even write her own songs!

            “I can’t imagine that it would go to trial that quickly, anyway,” Alicia went on.  “And even if it did, what would that matter?  The suit’s going to be against him, not you.”

            “You don’t think they’ll rush it through?” Arthur asked, before Curt could start in on Alicia for expecting him not to care that his boyfriend was being persecuted.  “Tommy Stone’s got high-powered lawyers, and he’s connected to the Reynolds administration…”

            “Believe me, unless you murdered someone in public, they’re not going to get you in court in under two weeks.  In fact, I’d expect they’ll give you at least that long to comply with their demand for a retraction.”  Alicia shook her head.  “Just lay low and wait for the fallout to settle.  If the public accepts your story as true, they probably won’t even bother with the lawsuit.”

            They waited in an uncomfortable silence until Alicia’s husband got off the phone and joined them again.  “He says he’ll take the case, provided you don’t embarrass him.”

            “We’ll have to buy you some better clothes, then,” Curt laughed, rubbing Arthur’s shoulder.  “Everything you’ve got right now is embarrassing.”

            “That’s not helpful, Curt.”

            “That’s not remotely what he was talking about,” Alicia’s husband said.  “He’s been in this kind of media circus before, you see.  After he’d helped his client through a number of preliminary hearings and protected him from the worst of the press attacks, his client turned around and accepted a large sum of money in exchange for recanting his story.  That makes a lawyer look bad, you see?  He doesn’t want a repeat of that.”

            “Believe me, I’m not about to retract the story, or apologize for it,” Arthur assured him.  “It’s all true, and it’s important that the world know about it.”

            “What do we do now, though?” Curt asked.  “We don’t have to hide in the fucking apartment or something, do we?”

            Alicia’s husband cleared his throat uncomfortably.  Probably didn’t like swearing any more than Alicia did.  “He says you’ve got two options.  You can hide from the press, keeping out of the public eye.  Or you can go out and spend as much time as possible in public, constantly making statements to the support of your story.  If you have additional information you can provide in those statements, all the better.”

            Curt laughed.  “Considering his editor wouldn’t let him use anything _I_ had to say, we’ve got a buttload of additional information.”

            “Well, _that’_ s a colorful metaphor,” Alicia said, looking at him with distaste.  “Would it kill you to be civil?”

            “Yeah, it would.”

            “We should probably talk to Mandy and Ms. Forsyth before we make any plans,” Arthur said.  “If we’re out makin’ a show of ourselves, and they’d rather us be silent…”

            “Why’s it any of their business?”

            “Ms. Forsyth and _Freedoms_ are also under the same legal threat,” Arthur pointed out, “and Mandy _was_ my primary source.  She’s probably not bein’ sued, but if we start appearin’ in public and talkin’ about it, then if she doesn’t do the same, it’ll make our story look suspect.”

            Curt sighed deeply.  “Yeah, I guess so.”

            Alicia and her husband kept pounding them with rules for a while longer before they finally shoved off.  Then Arthur insisted on calling his new editor.  Once that was done, Curt was finally allowed to call Mandy.  She had also received a demand from Tommy’s lawyers—ordering her to sue Arthur for libel and claim she’d never said any of that—so they decided to send a grand ‘fuck you’ to Tommy Stone and his lawyers.


	36. Chapter 36

            The Mangrove Swamp was the kind of club that Brian might have played at if he’d gotten his start in New York instead of London.  It catered to outcasts and misfits:  people like Brian was on New Year’s Eve, 1969.  Of course, by the time Brian first came to the US, he’d never have set foot in such a rinky-dink club.

            Maybe that was what Mandy liked about it.

            She’d never gotten her own career to the point where she could appear on the stage at the Mangrove Swamp, but she loved to go there and sit at some sheltered booth at the side of the room and watch hopeful young people appear on that stage, full of talent and ambition.  Once upon a time, she’d have felt she was watching future stars.  Now she was cynical enough to know she was watching future dried-out husks, future could-have-beens.

            But she enjoyed their hope.  And their talent, unrecognized though it would always be.

            This wasn’t the kind of club that most reporters ever visited, except maybe a few from papers like _The Village Voice_.  But it didn’t have to be.  Curt’s car had became a neon sign in the years since the spring of 1980, when he had gotten in that terrible wreck and ended up in jail.  The reporters had all been so excited by all the heroin in the front seat—so excited, in fact, that they couldn’t help multiplying its street value by ten in all their reports—that they hadn’t even wondered _why_ he’d gotten in that accident.  Nor had even one news report mentioned the fact that the police had verified that Curt was absolutely sober at the time of the accident.  And not one reporter had asked him what had caused the accident.

            Mandy had been sitting in this very booth when she heard about it.  Curt had been pretty badly hurt—another fact ignored in the news coverage—and she had been the only person to visit him in the hospital.  And she was the only person who had ever asked him what had happened.  A kid and her dog had been playing on the sidewalk as Curt was speeding down the street—even he admitted he’d been speeding by about 30 mph.  The dog ran out in the road, and Curt swerved to avoid it, smashing into that telephone pole and nearly totaling both his car and himself.  He claimed he’d thought the kid ran out, too, but Mandy was pretty sure he was lying, embarrassed to admit that he’d ruined his car and his career for a dog’s sake.

            Because he’d never told the media about that, the accident—and his subsequent prison sentence for possession of illegal narcotics—had made Curt even more infamous as a drug addict, and it had made reporters of the less reputable sort drop everything to follow him every time they saw his car on the street.  Mandy had even heard complaints from other people who owned black GTOs that they were often being mistaken for Curt, and followed around by cops or reporters.

            Therefore, it seemed certain that just the presence of Curt’s car in the valet parking would ensure that there would be plenty of reporters at the Mangrove Swamp that night.  They’d get to send their message in the most appropriate type of place.  And maybe a talented singer or two would get discovered in the bargain.

            Or maybe not.  She wasn’t about to get her hopes up on their account.

            Mandy was on her second scotch by the time Curt and Arthur arrived.  “You’re late,” she told them.

            “I got pulled over again,” Curt sighed.  “Stupid fucking cops.”

            “Have you considered gettin’ a new car?” Arthur suggested.  “Or at least paintin’ it a different color?”

            “Wouldn’t help,” Curt said, shaking his head.  “They know my license plate number.  And even if I got new plates, they’d know that, too.”

            “That _is_ the point of them,” Mandy laughed.

            “You’re not already drunk, are you?” Curt asked, looking at her with that narrow-eyed squint of his.  Mandy hated that.

            “I don’t have to be drunk to find your stupidity amusing.”

            “Fightin’ won’t help us any,” Arthur said, putting a calming hand on Curt’s shoulder.  Surprisingly, that actually worked, and Curt didn’t bite back.  Surely he hadn’t really been domesticated so easily?  “Won’t people suspect we’re just here for attention, though?” he asked.  “We hardly look like we’re here to have a good time.”

            “Yeah, we should’ve brought Tee,” Curt suggested, with a laugh.  “Then it’d be a double date.”

            “She’s a bit young for my tastes,” Mandy said, shaking her head.

            “That’s funny,” Curt commented, as he lit up a cigarette.  “She says you’re too old for her.  You’d be a perfect match.”

            “You’re the one who’s drunk,” Mandy sighed.  Not that it surprised her.  He usually was.

            “If I was drunk, I’d have been arrested,” Curt said, blowing his smoke in her direction.  “And if you don’t like my suggestion for a date for you, then call someone of your own.  Arthur’s right:  we’ll look less suspicious if you’ve got someone, too.”

            “I don’t have a boyfriend right now.”  It was hard for her to see anyone, after all.  Those goons tended to report it to Brian, and then her boyfriend would get hassled until he dumped her.  She wasn’t sure if it was that Brian was jealous of anyone else being with his ex-wife, or if it was just that he was still pissed at her, and wanted to make sure she was miserable.  It hardly mattered, though:  the end result was the same.

            “You should just give up on men,” Curt suggested.

            Mandy laughed, casting a glance over at Arthur.  “Yeah, because that worked _so well_ for you.”

            “What?”  Arthur looked at her in confusion, then looked at Curt.  “What’s she talkin’ about?”

            “Nothing,” Curt grumbled, already putting out his cigarette.  What a waste!

            “Oh, you haven’t told him?”

            “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” Curt insisted.  Maybe he really didn’t know.  He was probably wasted when he said it.  But that didn’t make it any less fun to torment him with it.

            “Jack told me about it,” Mandy said, looking at Arthur.  “When he and Curt were working on their album in Berlin, some reporters asked Curt if they were an item.  Curt just told them to piss off, of course,” she laughed.  “But then he was ranting to Jack about it later, and swore he was done with men for good—that no man was good enough to take Brian’s place.”

            “I never said that,” Curt insisted.  But the way he was blushing proved otherwise.  Maybe he had actually tried to act on that drunken pledge to give up men?  But if he’d fucked Arthur ten years ago, he hadn’t tried for very long!

            Arthur, meanwhile, was gazing at Curt with such deep affection that it was almost painful to look at.  How had he managed to survive in New York if he was still so innocent?  For that matter, how had he survived in London?  It could eat a person up just as easily and brutally as New York could.

            They sat there in silence for a few minutes, until the waiter came over to take Curt and Arthur’s drink orders.  While he was ordering his beer—so classless!—Curt told the waiter to bring an extra beer for Mandy’s date, who was running late.  Surely he didn’t think the presence of an extra drink was going to trick anyone into thinking she really had a date coming?

            The waiter hadn’t been gone long before Curt whispered something into Arthur’s ear, which had the young man dutifully announce that he had to go to the toilet, and would be right back.  Mandy did her best not to glare at Curt in the time they were waiting for Arthur to return.  How stupid was he?  _Maybe_ it would be more convincing to the press if Mandy had a date of her own, but wasn’t the point to annoy _Brian_ , not to trick the media into thinking anything?

            Arthur returned not long after the drinks arrived, but he didn’t say anything about who he had called.  Mandy was _not_ going to accept it if he had really called Teresa Garcia.  That girl was irritating, and even if she wasn’t, she was little more than a child!

            The act on stage soon changed from a rather unimpressive band to one of the best singers in the Mangrove Swamp’s current talent pool.  That saved them from any uncomfortable need to fill the silence with conversation until after the waiter had taken the order for their meal.

            And by then the real act was about to begin.

            The flash of a paparazzi’s camera was the first warning—if that can be called a warning!  Then several men with notepads descended on their table, all talking at once.

            “Shut the fuck up!” Curt snapped at them.  “I’m trying to listen to the music.”  As if Curt Wild ever listened to anyone’s music but his own?

            “What brings you out of your hiding place?” one of the reporters asked, having recovered more quickly than the others.  “And with a woman present!”

            “What the fuck is _that_ supposed to mean?”

            “Well…just…why are you out…with a woman…?”

            “Hey, I’ve known Mandy for years.  Can’t a guy catch up with an old friend?”  At Curt’s mention of her name, the reporters finally realized who Mandy was, and promptly began flashing photos of her.  Thank God she was fully made up!  If she looked as bad as she sometimes did…

            “But what brings you to a spot like this one?” a second reporter asked.  “Doesn’t seem like the typical venue for catching up with old friends.”

            “Well, we’re also celebrating,” Curt told them, with a self-satisfied smile as he put an arm around Arthur’s shoulders.  Didn’t any of the reporters realize how _bizarre_ it was that Curt was being so cooperative with them?  Sure, he had given plenty of interviews in his day—perfectly reasonable ones, for the most part—but those had all been by his own choice.  Reporters who descended on him like so many crows on a bit of choice roadkill tended to be treated as such, if not as something even worse.  “Arthur just published a really great article.”  Apparently, Curt was unaware of the term ‘on the nose’ or how it was a bad thing in certain settings…

            “I thought you lost your job!” the first reporter said, shoving his camera up in Arthur’s face and snapping a picture.  Mandy had to fight laughter at the thought of what that picture was going to look like.  Who wanted a close-up of the inside of someone’s nose?

            “I got a new one,” Arthur retorted, shoving the camera away from him, even as he pressed up closer against Curt’s side.  If he didn’t like being the focus of attention, then he should break up with Curt as soon as possible, because it wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

            “I hadn’t heard about that,” a somber voice said.  He was with the other vultures, and had a pad and pencil, but he didn’t look like a reporter.  Looked more like one of Brian’s goons.  Good.  That would make sure the intended recipient got the whole ‘fuck you’ message.  Unless those guys reported to Shannon…

            “It’s a very small magazine,” Curt told him, glaring at the goon with a hate that surprised Mandy a bit.  Maybe he’d had a personal run-in with that particular goon?  “Doesn’t cater to people like you.”

            The actual reporters started clamoring for more information, until Arthur uneasily told them the name of the magazine.  Again, perhaps a bit too on the nose, but making sure everyone saw the article _was_ important.  Though having them discover it through Brian’s lawsuit would have had a delicious irony to it.  Curt, meanwhile, was still glaring at the goon, like he was actively trying to kill him just by staring at him.

            Their table continued to be plagued by the same small crowd of reporters until a very attractive black man about thirty years old came up, and sat down beside Mandy.  “Sorry I’m late,” he said.  He seemed to be looking at Arthur more than anyone else.  Probably one of Arthur’s exes or something.  Pity about that.  Youth aside, he seemed like Mandy’s type.

            “So you’re Mandy’s date?” Curt asked.

            The man nodded uncomfortably, with a glance at Mandy, who smiled at him.  He didn’t look reassured by her smile.  Well, she’d done what she could.

            “I’m Arthur, and this’s Curt.  And you are?”

            The new arrival’s eyes widened for a moment—hopefully the reporters hadn’t noticed!—then he smiled weakly and said “Lloyd.”

            Seeing one of the paparazzi aiming a camera in their direction, Mandy slipped her arm around Lloyd, and leaned in close to him as if they were really on a date.  _That_ should piss Brian off good and proper!


	37. Chapter 37

            Their stunt had immediate results.  The next morning when Arthur went to the newsstand to see the headlines, all the tabloids in town had stories about it.  By that evening, the television news was running a full length feature on the allegations that Tommy Stone was really Brian Slade, and Tommy had released half a dozen desperate statements to the press insisting that he absolutely was not.

            But no matter who it was that was trying to protect him, they hadn’t done a good enough job.  Within three days, the entirety of the media—print and television alike—concluded that Arthur’s article was correct.  When he had made up the Tommy Stone identity, Brian hadn’t bothered to fill in much of his new history.  He—or more often Shannon—always staved off questions about family and childhood as wanting to keep the singer’s private life private.  Which is all well and good for real people who genuinely exist.  But for a false persona?  Having a nicely fleshed out history could be the difference between being spotted and getting away with it.

            There were no records of Tommy Stone existing before the name change went through in 1979—since, after all, he _didn’t_ exist before that time—and not one person had been tasked with pretending to be his childhood friend, or a family member.  They hadn’t even picked a false home town for him.  If they’d been smart, they’d have found a town with the graves of a couple named Stone who had been the right age—and died at the right time—to have potentially been his parents.  For that matter, they could have just put up fake gravestones in a cemetery in a big city.  In a small town, it wouldn’t be too difficult for a journalist to ask enough questions to realise the nature of the deception, but in a big city there were too many people to ask them all, and the graves would be accepted as proof.  But proof in the form of someone who conveniently couldn’t be questioned, couldn’t mess up their lines, or fess up to the lies.

            However, they’d done none of that, so it hadn’t taken long for everyone to establish that Tommy Stone’s slate was too clean to be real.  The fact that he had a habit—especially earlier in his career—of throwing in British slang in his statements to the press only made it obvious that he was really English.  And Arthur had already pointed out to them that Brian’s real first name of Thomas and his third name of Stoningham had provided the false name.  Honestly, Arthur was a little surprised it had taken them more than one day to decide he was right.

            Once it was clear to all that Tommy was Brian, President Reynolds himself mentioned it in a speech at his next rally, railing against the deceptions of foreigners and homosexuals.  It was too much—put Arthur in mind of Queen Gertrude—but of course Reynolds’ supporters ate it up.  The Committee for Cultural Renewal also officially added Tommy Stone to its list of undesirables, and yet it also couldn’t remove him from the roster for its fund-raising concert on the National Mall, because with only two days to prepare, they couldn’t get anyone else to fill in his slot.

            Arthur was looking forward to seeing how _that_ was going to play out.  The idea of seeing Tommy Stone booed by a crowd of drunken reactionaries was most satisfying.

            But at present he didn’t have much time to think about it, because the AIDS research benefit was the same night, and Arthur was doing his best to help Curt finish getting ready.  He was also supposed to be preparing his research for his next article, but Ms. Forsyth was just going to have to wait.  Curt was much more important.

            On the night of the concert, Arthur was backstage the whole time.  Seeing a concert from backstage wasn’t actually as exciting as he once would have thought—the performances couldn’t be properly appreciated from the side—but getting to spend the extra time with Curt made up for that.  The girl he had met at the record store had really come through; there were three students with cameras wandering around backstage, documenting the event and interviewing the performers, and there were at least four more out front among the audience, recording both the performances and the fans.

            The concert started with Mandy walking out on stage to address the crowd.  She was a little _too_ made up when viewed from a normal distance, but to the people in the audience she probably looked glorious, a beautiful face to match her sexy, sequined dress in rainbow colours.  She spent a while warming up the crowd, then introduced Teresa Garcia with as much excitement in her voice as the audience felt to be seeing Teresa, despite that Mandy didn’t seem to like Teresa or her music one bit.

            As Teresa took the stage, her fans went wild, and Arthur could clearly hear both men and women shouting her name, and screaming that they loved her.  Her music was still too cheerful and generic for his tastes, however, and he quickly got bored of watching her performance.  Instead, he went back to check on Curt, who was having his stage make-up applied.

            “How’s it going out there?” Curt asked.

            Arthur shrugged.  “The audience seems excited.”

            Curt laughed.  “They usually are.  And if they’re not, then you’re _really_ in trouble.”

            “How about you?” Arthur asked, taking a seat next to Curt and setting a hand on his bare chest.  “Are you ready?”

            “’Course I am!  I’ve been doing this for years!”  Curt maintained his look of bravado for a moment or two, then sighed.  “Been a while since I performed in a venue this big.”

            “You’ll be fine,” Arthur assured him.  “Just think of how much everyone here loves you.  And then remember that Tommy Stone’s probably bein’ jeered in Washington even as we speak.”

            Curt laughed.  “Does _everyone_ here love me?” he asked, in a wry tone.

            “Well, _I_ certainly do.”

            “That’s the important part,” Curt said, leaning in for a kiss.

            Their lips had barely touched before the make-up lady shoved Arthur away.  “You’ll wreck up his make-up!  Scoot!  Go watch the concert or something!”

            Arthur gave Curt’s hand a warm squeeze before he went back to the wings to watch the show.  They’d have plenty of time to be alone after the performance, after all, when they wouldn’t have to worry about Curt’s make-up.

            The rest of the acts were pretty good, though Arthur hadn’t heard of any of them before.  But he didn’t particularly care about any of it until Curt took the stage.

            Before starting his first song, Curt glanced over at Arthur, then looked out at the audience.  “You may have heard the music of his first song before,” he told them, “but this the first time I’m performing these lyrics publically.  This is the way the song’s supposed to go, and it’s called ‘The Stars Are Falling’.”

            With every beautiful word of the song, Arthur was transported back to that London rooftop ten years ago, to the most perfect and lyrical night of his life…


	38. Chapter 38

            The Monday after the benefit concert—and the competing Committee fundraiser in Washington—one of the networks ran a half hour long special on Tommy Stone.  Arthur was curious to see what it would say, since the coverage of the concert on the National Mall hadn’t mentioned at all how the audience had reacted to Tommy now that they knew his original identity.  Curt hadn’t wanted to watch it—naturally—but had reluctantly agreed to watch it with Arthur, so long as Arthur promised to give him at least one blowjob, and to allow Curt to buy him a new, less drab wardrobe.  Arthur wasn’t entirely sure what the point of the latter concession was—particularly considering that Curt’s street clothes were not that different from Arthur’s—but he saw no reason not to grant it.

            The first ten minutes of the programme was exclusively dedicated to explaining the situation for those who had somehow missed all the commotion.  After that, they started showing interviews with fans.  “I was all ready to boo him off the stage last Friday,” one woman told the camera.  “Brought tomatoes to throw and everything.  But, you know, once he started singing, I just couldn’t do it.  Ended up cheering myself hoarse, like usual.”

            “Fucking hell,” Curt grumbled.  “Don’t let ‘em all be like _her_.”

            “You got plenty of cheers, too,” Arthur reminded him, patting his knee.

            They did show a number of irate fans, mostly male, who felt that Tommy had betrayed them by having once been Brian Slade—as if he had chosen to have retroactively _become_ Brian after having been Tommy first—but the audience section closed out with another tolerant female fan.  “I didn’t know what to think about it at first,” she said.  “I mean, when I first heard the rumour, I thought it was just mean gossip and it wasn’t true.  But when I realised it _was_ true…I wasn’t sure what to think of that.  It’s disgusting, thinking of him ever having kissed a man like that, but isn’t it my Christian duty to forgive him his mistakes?”

            “I’m gonna puke,” Curt said.

            “I thought I should learn more about who he used to be,” the fan went on, “so I’ve started listening to some of the music he put out under that old name.  You know, it’s actually pretty good?  I was surprised by that.”

            “ _Pretty_ good?” Curt repeated.  “It’s a thousand fucking times better than the shit he’s putting out now!”

            “Yeah, but if she likes the new shite, she’s hardly going to be able to fully appreciate the good stuff,” Arthur said.

            Following the interactions with the fans, they ran an interview with Tommy himself, which started with a long statement from the singer.  “I tried to hide my past, it’s true,” he admitted, though still using the Tommy Stone voice.  “I made a lot of mistakes in my old career, both personal and private.  The only thing I look back on as _not_ having been a mistake is the music itself.  Everything else…how could I have asked people to take me seriously with all that nonsense hanging over my head?  I’m not on drugs now, I don’t get drunk anymore, I don’t sleep with men, and I’d never again abuse my fans’ affections for me.  I wanted a new shot.  I wanted a chance to get it right.”

            “But why an entirely new identity?” the interviewer asked.  “Your old career was never so well known in America as it was in Britain.  You probably could have started over here without needing the name change.”

            Tommy smiled uneasily.  “I was in a terrible auto accident some years back.  Nearly died.  The plastic surgeons who reconstructed my face didn’t do such a good job.  Seeing that I looked like someone else anyway, why _not_ have a new name?  Since my ex-wife was American, I had American citizenship, so I thought…why not make myself an entirely new life in the New World?  Get it right this time.”

            “He’s repeating himself,” Arthur chuckled.

            “Isn’t the interviewer gonna call him out on his bullshit?” Curt asked.  “He claims he doesn’t fuck men anymore, but he fucked that ex of yours.”

            Arthur shuddered.  “I think everyone in the world—except Brad—would rather not think about that.”

            “Yeah.  How desperate does a guy have to be to sleep with someone that ugly?”

            “By ‘someone that ugly’ are you referrin’ to Brad or Tommy?” Arthur asked, his tone a bit flatter than he meant it to be.

            “I meant Brad, but it applies to Tommy, too,” Curt laughed.

            “You do realize that _I_ slept with Brad, right?” Arthur sighed.

            “But you were feeling pretty desperate, or you wouldn’t have,” Curt insisted.

            “Not particularly, no.”  Arthur shook his head.  “Unlike you, I live in the real world.  If I held out for perfect men like you, I’d have gone ten years without sex.”

            “I’d have made it up to you,” Curt assured him, with a passionate kiss.

            They were still kissing when the phone rang.  Curt answered it with a snarl, but his expression soon turned to one of joy.  Though the interview with Tommy was still going, Curt turned off the television as soon as he had hung up the phone.  “We’re gonna go to bed to celebrate,” he told Arthur.

            “Celebrate what?” Arthur asked, as he got off the sofa.  He had no objections to having sex—how could he?—but he did want to know what the sex was in celebration of.

            “That was Alicia.  She just got in an offer for a new recording contract.  This time next year, I’ll have put out a new album,” Curt announced proudly.

            “That’s fantastic!”  Arthur kissed him passionately.  “We’ll have to go out for a nice dinner after we celebrate,” he added afterwards.

            “Sure, fine, but let’s get fucking already.”

            Arthur laughed.  “You’re quite the romantic, aren’t you, love?”

            “I’ve decided what to call the album already,” Curt told him, as they headed into the bedroom.  “That’s romantic.”

            “Oh?  What are you goin’ to call it?”

            “Make a Wish.”


End file.
